Kindergartners Learn ‘P’ is for Pole-Dancing

Some kindergartners in Shenzhen were welcomed back from summer vacation by a bizarre performance on Monday — their principal pole-dancing in a midriff-baring outfit.

The dance, captured in videos that have spread rapidly across Chinese social media, included a striptease and was one of 10 performances the school had arranged for the children on the first day of the new school year. The other performances included Chinese dance and jazz dance.

Parents of students at the southern Chinese preschool were not impressed, and complained that pole-dancing is inappropriate for children.

“We’re trying to pull the kids out of the school and get our tuition back,” Shenzhen-based writer Michael Standaert, whose children attend the New Shahui Kindergarten, said in a Twitter thread about the performance, which took place on Monday.

Standaert said the kindergarten had put up posters advertising a pole-dancing school, and that there were other pole-dancers performing on Monday.

The company that runs the kindergarten has been ordered to fire the principal, Lai Rong, and issue an apology to parents, the education bureau of Shenzhen’s Baoan district, where the school is located, said in a statement Monday afternoon responding to parent complaints (link in Chinese).

The education bureau confirmed that the kindergarten had invited an external organization to set up pole-dancing equipment and perform on campus, and said it was launching an investigation into the kindergarten’s operations.

Online reactions to the performance ranged from outrage to amusement.

“Every normal person knows that pole-dancing is a type of dance is absolutely not suitable for kindergarten students. So why did this kindergarten principal not understand this?” QQ user Ranranderan said in an essay (link in Chinese).

“The principal has been kicked in the head by a donkey,” Weibo user YIweilai said, less subtly (link in Chinese).

But some defended the principals’ actions.

“Only adults see it as revealing clothes and sexually provocative movements. Children do not pay attention at all to these,” Weibo user 54sunny54 commented (link in Chinese). “I don’t think it’s wrong to give children a full introduction to the whole range of dances, and in fact at an age where there is no sexual consciousness they wouldn’t form any kind of prejudice against the dance. People really do project what’s in their own minds onto what they see.”

Lai herself told the Chinese-language Beijing News she thought “pole-dancing was a healthy sport.”

“I didn’t introduce it to young children as any kind of sexual dance,” she said.

In recent years, pole-dancing has taken off in China, where it is frequently performed in unusual contexts, including rural funerals.

The country also has a national pole-dancing team that trains at the China Pole Dance Sports & Training Center in Tianjin.

Contact reporter Teng Jing Xuan (jingxuanteng@caixin.com)