1. [para. 1][para. 2] A mother from Inner Mongolia named Feng Hongxia traveled over 10 hours to Yunnan, then to the border town of Mohan, and crossed into Boten, Laos, to inspect a school for her son. She concealed her true purpose from customs officials, claiming to be a tourist, as instructed by the school's assistant.
2. [para. 3][para. 4] Boten, located within a China-Laos cross-border cooperation zone, was once known for loosely regulated casinos until a 2011 joint crackdown. The town remains associated with the sex trade, with a red-light district featuring shops and cabarets, and is still largely underdeveloped despite attempts at reinvention.
3. [para. 5][para. 6] The Huilan Hotel, the finest in Boten, is owned by Today International Academy, the institution Feng came to inspect. Students practiced martial arts in the hotel plaza twice daily, presenting a stark contrast to the surrounding nightlife district. Feng had followed the founders' "new education" movement for years, drawn by its critique of conventional schooling and promise of discipline and upward mobility.
4. [para. 7][para. 8][para. 9] The school's origins trace back over two decades to Wuhan, founded by Zhang Jianbai, a former philosophy lecturer at Wuhan University. It started as a homeschooling program and expanded into a broader network of schools, courses, and investment schemes. According to dozens of former pupils, teachers, and parents interviewed by Caixin, the school isolated children, subjected them to severe physical and psychological abuse, and extracted millions of yuan from devoted families.
5. [para. 10][para. 11][para. 12] Today Academy rejected homework and traditional exams but operated without full educational licensing, relocating repeatedly from Wuhan to Yunnan, Chiang Mai, and eventually Boten. At its peak, it housed hundreds of pupils and spawned over 70 franchise schools across China. It later recast itself as a high-end international school, featuring promotional videos of pupils performing gymnastics and bilingual speeches.
6. [para. 13][para. 14][para. 15] The admissions process was demanding, including a free 35-day yoga retreat and an entrance requirement of hiking 36.5 kilometers a day for four months. Parents could enroll in the "Wisdom Heart" course taught by Liu Cun, billed as a spiritual healer, which combined anti-materialist teachings with mysticism, karma, and reincarnation, ending with attendees bowing before her.
7. [para. 16][para. 17][para. 18] Feng disputed with Liu during a seminar, leading her to question the community and report her experience to the Chinese consulate in Luang Prabang, which told her the school was involved in illegal activities with cult-like tendencies. Former pupils described extreme physical demands, including 90 cartwheels in three minutes and thousands of leg kicks, plus ideological indoctrination in classes where independent readings were discouraged.
8. [para. 19][para. 20][para. 21] In the "Princess Class," Zhang taught a rigid social hierarchy, dividing society into upper, middle, and lower strata, and describing women in three categories. Pupils who expressed a desire to leave were told they were distracted by adolescence. Girls were paired into "marriages," which often collapsed, leaving students isolated and more dependent on the school.
9. [para. 22][para. 23][para. 24] The network was held together by strict loyalty, with parents subject to annual evaluations testing their agreement with Zhang's views. Contact with family was limited to a few hours weekly and reportedly monitored. The Lunar New Year was discouraged as a period of consumerism that could undo a child's progress, and dissent was punished, including reporting and public humiliation.
10. [para. 25][para. 26][para. 27][para. 28][para. 29] The school promoted rapid learning methods like the "Seven Movie Learning Method," memorizing Disney dialogues, which produced impressive recall but weak comprehension. Standard subjects received little attention, and by 2015, Zhang replaced college-educated teachers with teenagers trained within the system, called "2.0 teachers," some still in their mid-teens without formal credentials.
11. [para. 30][para. 31][para. 32][para. 33] Physical training was intense, with children as young as five pushed into long-distance running and endurance drills. "Limit challenge days" involved rising at 4 a.m. for long runs while carrying heavy logs, followed by thousands of jump-rope repetitions. Diet was restricted, largely excluding meat and dairy, and a "junk food festival" punished cravings by making students eat a chosen food until sick.
12. [para. 34][para. 35][para. 36][para. 37] Disciplinary methods grew harsher after a 2016 parental dissent wave. The "Youth Military Academy" charged fees up to 500,000 yuan ($74,000) per year, where children as young as eight could be handcuffed and suspended from a beam for 24 to 72 hours with little food and no bathroom access. Parents from other classes actively sought this program, believing it effective.
13. [para. 38][para. 39][para. 40][para. 41][para. 42][para. 43] Tuition fees rose from 15,000 yuan annually in the early 2000s to 540,000 yuan by 2025. In 2017, Zhang persuaded parents to finance a campus in Chiang Mai with "school district" apartments priced over $500,000. After visa restrictions, attention shifted to Boten, where he raised nearly 200 million yuan within months, but the ambitious educational complex never materialized. Money flowed opaquely into a Hong Kong-registered untaxed fund, with cash allegedly moved out of China through informal channels.
14. [para. 44][para. 45][para. 46][para. 47][para. 48][para. 49] The unraveling led to the revocation of Today International Academy's operating license in Laos. Former pupils struggled with the return to ordinary life, lacking accredited diplomas and facing psychological aftereffects, including guilt over rest or enjoyment. As former pupil Liu Jiaqi said, "More than the physical restrictions, it is the prison of thought that is hardest to escape." Feng Xue, who broke away at 17, rebuilt her education from elementary-level math, saying leaving was the first time she felt genuinely free.
AI generated, for reference only
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