A Parents' Chat, 5,000 Yuan of Cosmetics and an Inquiry: Teacher's Day's Gift Problem Returns
A parents' committee at a prestigious Taiyuan middle school crowdfunded some 5,000 yuan of Teacher's Day gifts — MAC sets, Parker pens, bouquets — before a leaked screenshot reached regulators; the district education bureau has ordered an investigation, on the holiday itself.
Two days before Teacher's Day, a screenshot from a parents' group chat at a prestigious private middle school in Taiyuan set off the annual argument about what the holiday is for. The message, posted by a parents' committee in a class of the city's Changqingteng — "Ivy" — Middle School, laid out a gift plan for the seven homeroom teachers: five MAC cosmetics sets at roughly 2,600 yuan, two Parker pens for the male teachers at 1,288 yuan, and seven bouquets from a parent's flower shop for 2,000 — about 5,000 yuan in all, crowdfunded across the class.
"Time is tight and it's hard to please everyone, so a few of us have tentatively decided the gifts," the message read, asking parents to understand. Someone in the group evidently did not: the screenshot reached the complaint platforms, and by September 8 the story was national. The school said it "explicitly forbids teachers from accepting gifts — if anything happened, it must have been organised by parents on their own initiative." The district education bureau in Taiyuan's Xiaodian district said it had ordered the school to investigate, an announcement Observer Network posted on the morning of the holiday itself.
The gifts, in other words, were never delivered — but the conversation they triggered is a fixture of every September. This year's instalment began even before the Taiyuan leak: in Liuzhou, Guangxi, a parent who declined to join a class collection for Lancôme gift boxes was pushed out of the parents' group chat, and the commentary account Xiaokedao weighed in with praise for the refuser, sketching the "soul-searching question" every family faces — refuse and risk a teacher's cold shoulder, or pay and watch the gesture become an annual tax.
Underneath the argument sits an institution most outsiders have never heard of: the family committee, or jiaweihui, a parents' panel that Chinese schools rely on for everything from fundraising to event logistics. On Weibo the Taiyuan story made the committee itself the defendant — "what is this organisation for, exactly?" was the most-quoted question — with others asking whether it had become an arm of the teachers rather than a check on them. Its power to speak for 47 families with one message is precisely what rankles.
The official line this year was set before the leaks: a China Youth Daily commentary argued under the headline "Teacher's Day is not gift day" that clean-handed respect is worth more than any present, and People's Daily's opinion arm made the same case — that the gift economy around the holiday cheapens it. State media lavished genuine ceremony on the 42nd Teacher's Day: Xi Jinping sent greetings to teachers nationwide, and 25 "most beautiful teachers" were named. But the story that will outlast the banners is the one that got a school investigated: 5,000 yuan, five MAC sets, and a parent who said no.