路透社11月23日播发记者Kitty Bu 和 Maxim Duncan发自北京的报道，原题是Playtime a luxury for competitive Chinese kids，摘要如下（英语原文附后）：

在中国，激烈的就业竞争和家长的望子成龙，意味着孩子多数时间与书本而不是与朋友为伴。整天学习、很少玩耍是大多数孩子的生活模式。

独生子女政策给孩子成才带来巨大压力。如今，北京不乏出数万元高额学费让孩子接受精英教育的家长，他们希望孩子能赢在起跑线上。MEG双语幼儿园每年学费6万8000元人民币，其园长李鸿雁说，“孩子压力很大。中国有句俗语，父母全都‘望子成龙，望女成凤’。”除参加数学班、语言班和其他特长班，孩子几乎没有玩耍时间。儿童人权团体认为，玩耍对孩子健康成长至关重要。

联合国儿童基金会驻中国办事处儿童保护专家马思婷说，“我们称之‘被遗忘的权利’，因为大人通常认为玩的权利很奢侈。他们没意识到玩是必要的。通过玩，孩子能学会社交、沟通、分享及解决摩擦。这些技能从书本里无法学到。”

对那些在子女身上倾注了太多希望和心血，并深知孩子将面临激烈竞争的父母而言，这些技能或许不切实际。

北京第8中学设有专门培养“天才”的实验班，学生已经习惯每周7天上课。每年，数以千计的家长让孩子通过严格考试挤进实验班。后几名的考生甚至不得不和老师们共度几周，直到评委组最终让他们通过。入选的学生可比普通学生提早7年升入大学。但代价很大，学生每周只有30分钟玩耍时间。当问及玩耍权利时，大多数学生只是摇摇头，反问何为“玩耍权利”。

Playtime a luxury for competitive Chinese kids

By Kitty Bu and Maxim Duncan

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - All work and little play is the norm for most children in China, where stiff competition for future jobs and ambitious parents mean long hours in the company of school books, not friends.
China's one-child policy has contributed to putting enormous pressure on children to succeed, and there is no shortage of wealthy Beijing parents these days willing to stump tens of thousands of yuan for elite educational institutions to give their offspring an academic head-start.
"Children have so much pressure to do well. There is a Chinese idiom: 'Every parent wants their boy to be a dragon and daughter to be a phoenix'," said Li Hongyan, who runs the 68,000 yuan ($9,960) a year MEG Bilingual International kindergarten.
But between maths, language and other so-called enrichment classes, there is often little time for play, which children's rights groups say is essential for healthy development.
Last Friday marked Universal Children's Day, which aims to promote the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, established 20 years ago to protect the fundamental rights of all children -- including the right to play.
"This is what we usually call the 'forgotten right,' because of course adults think the right to play is perhaps a luxury. They don't realize that this is actually a necessity," said Kirsten Di Martino, Chief of Child Protection at UNICEF China.
Through play, children learn how to socialize, communicate and share as well as solve conflicts -- skills that can't be taught from a book, she said.
But for parents who pour all their hopes and ambitions into just one son or daughter, and know they will face a highly competitive society, those skills may be too abstract.
Introduced in the late 1970s to ease strain on the country's limited resources, the one-child policy forbids most urbanites from having two children, although there is more leeway for ethnic minorities and rural parents whose first child is a girl.

In the Experimental Class for the Gifted and Talented Children at Beijing's No. 8 High School, which churns out "geniuses," students are used to a seven-day school week.
Most Chinese students start high school at 16 but each year a few dozen 9 to 10 year-olds are put on a fast-track to university with a speeded up curriculum, the director of the class said.
Each year thousands of parents put their children through rigorous exams to get onto the program. The last few candidates even have to live with teachers for a few weeks until a panel of judges makes their final vote.
Those selected get to university up to seven years ahead of normal students. In return, many children in the class said they usually have just 30 minutes of play time a week.
Ten-year-old Wang Shaohan is already thinking about college.

"There are pluses and minuses. The negative side is that when we get into university we are not mature like others," Wang said.

"The plus side is that I can get ahead. My mother said the best time in life is college life so she wants me in early. It's not a bad thing to start early."

Wang's mother is not worried about the pressure.

"I think all children are different. This way of studying simply suits my child well. I haven't thought about other things. It's a good thing as long as it suits my child," she said.

And when asked about the right to play, most children simply shook heads and asked what it was.

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