A True Story Heard at the Market: Second Grade, Six Days a Week of Cram School

In April 2013, on an ordinary morning, Mizuc was wandering around the market entrance.

The market is a curious place. It isn’t like a café, full of deliberate interaction, nor like an office, carrying a specific purpose. People crowd together simply because they happen to both need to buy tofu or a bunch of greens, and the conversation just flows from there. You often inadvertently overhear a genuine slice of someone else’s life.

That day, Mizuc, beside a noisy stall, heard an aunt’s complaint.

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The aunt said she hadn’t been able to see her grandson for a long time.

Her grandson was only in the second grade of elementary school.

At first hearing this, Mizuc thought it must be some special family situation—parents too busy with work, or living too far away, something like that. But what the aunt said next made me pause.

The grandson couldn’t come to see her, not because he lived far away, but because—he had no time.

A second-grade elementary school child, with no time.

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The aunt carefully counted off her grandson’s schedule, as if counting how many days in a week she could have to herself:

• Monday, math tutoring
• Tuesday, English tutoring
• Wednesday, taekwondo
• Thursday, soccer
• Friday, piano
• Saturday, abacus

Seven days a week, six days packed full.

Only Sunday was left for breathing—or for unfinished homework, or for catching up on sleep, or for some last-minute added event.

As the aunt said this, her tone held not anger, but more a kind of grievance and helplessness that was hard to put into words. She wasn’t blaming her daughter-in-law or son; she even said, “If you don’t learn now, you’ll lose out later”—she truly believed this, but she also truly missed that grandson’s face.

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Mizuc stood beside her, silently listening, without interrupting.

Actually, I didn’t know what to say either.

Say “that’s too pitiful”? Or “modern parents have it hard too”? Or “competition is so fierce, you have to get tutoring”? All these words have their reason, and all of them are also pale.

But there was one image that made me a little reluctant to let go: a seven- or eight-year-old child, on some ordinary dusk, being picked up from one classroom and taken to the next, his backpack filled with handouts for different subjects, the sky outside the window turning from blue to orange to black—but he probably no longer quite remembered what the evening sky looked like.

And at the market entrance, his grandmother was buying groceries, thinking about how she didn’t know how long it had been since she’d seen him.

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Hearing this, I just felt exhausted at heart.

Not for that grandmother, not for that pair of parents, not even for that child—but for this whole thing, that collective sense of powerlessness where everyone feels it’s wrong, yet everyone feels they have no choice.

The market’s clamor continued as before; the tofu stall owner was shouting about freshly arrived silken tofu, someone was picking fish, someone was counting change.

The aunt walked off carrying her grocery basket, and the grandson’s schedule was still there.