Is it even possible to consider yourself a real college student if your dorm room floor isn’t perpetually veiled in a thin layer of pizza cheese and a pulsating sludge that was at one point seven-layer dip? After all, what in the hell is the point of higher education if not to cement the beautiful relationship between student and food delivery worker?
Sadly, the symbiotic relationship between deliverer and deliveree is coming under threat in China, as the nation continues to make an unprecedented push to fill its universities—while utterly failing to feed students to their satisfaction.
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More and more students are attending Chinese schools of higher learning: last summer, roughly 7.5 million students graduated from China’s 2,529 higher-education institutions—about eight times as many graduates than in 2000. (By comparison, only 3.8 million degrees—associates or higher—were given out in the US last year.)
But a trifecta of problems has arisen around the issue of feeding these students.
First, the students are complaining that food on campus is damn lousy. Second, many Chinese colleges have enacted rules banning the delivery of food on campus. Third, many of said institutions also strictly ban students from actually leaving the campus at all during the week.
Thankfully, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Spurred on by these overbearing rules, China’s delivery people have become mighty creative. In fact, they’ve now been spotted using ladders to navigate campus walls to deliver their edible bounties directly into dorm rooms.
Photo via Weibo user Heilongjiang Morning News
Case in point: Jingzhou Entrepreneurial Technical College. When it banned food delivery vehicles from entering campus, deliveries continued in a novel way. According to Chutian Metropolis News, women on ladders have been climbing as high as 36 feet off the ground to pass food to students through windows.
Similarly, at Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, a wall failed to halt the delivery of dumplings to students. According to Shanghaiist, campus officials observed helplessly as delivery people perched on top of a wall to hand out orders to hungry students.
Photo via Weibo user Heilongjiang Morning News
Chen Jinkai, an official in charge of the Jingzhou college’s public affairs, told the newspaper he would talk to students to resolve the problem. We wish him luck, because judging from personal experience, we have a feeling that nothing will get between college students and their appointed food deliveries.
It’s just like they always say: “University heads just don’t understand.”
