For the longest time, public schools in China have been providing lunch for students. Recently, school kitchens have been closed down. Food is now catered by commercially-run central kitchens. Since then, several incidents have occurred; including one in which a rat’s head was found in the catered food.
Not long after the video went viral on social media, experts jumped out to refute the claim and insisted that the alleged rat’s head was actually duck’s neck. Through coercion and enticement, the victim was also forced to admit that it was actually a duck’s neck.
From duck’s neck, school lunches have moved to the next level. What the students are having for lunch are now ready to eat meals like those sold at convenience stores and issued to soldiers in the field. Parents have complained. A few schools have relented when parents staged street protests, but for how long can parents keep the pressure on these well-connected businesses?
It’s difficult to trace all the stakeholders in the school catering business. Most of the publicly known ones care probably “white gloves” 白手套. It should also be noted that the meals served at “elite schools” that CCP cadres send their kids to, are culinary delights rafted by chefs.
In the following video, Chen Qiu Shi points out that the real problem does not lie in the ready to eat meals but in the acceptance and acquiescence of such inequality and all kinds of misinformation in a supposedly socialist state.
The folks who sell the meals to schools and the schools that indoctrinate the students all aim to let children of “plebeians” remain “plebeians”.