Chinese universities sent students on spring break - to fall in love

Nine colleges in China have told their students before spring break to spend them on love, according to Business Insider. All these educational institutions belong to the Fan Mei educational group, which trains aviation industry specialists: pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers and airport security personnel.

Since 2019, all colleges provide students and teachers with spring break from April 1 to April 7. This year the holidays got a romantic accent. According to the management, they hope that "students will be able to learn to love nature, love life and enjoy love". "Go outside the campus, get in touch with nature and feel the beauty of spring with all your heart", - the school said in a statement.

The decline in the birth rate is a headache for the Chinese authorities, who are trying to reverse the unpleasant trend in various ways. To make people remember family values, local companies come up with various tricks, from providing 30-day parental leave to attempts to introduce young townspeople to elderly bachelors from villages.

According to Liu Ping, the vice dean of the Southwest Aviation Vocational College of Sichuan, which belongs to the Fan Mei Group, spring break was introduced in response to the wishes of students. According to the newspaper of the Youth League of the Communist Party of China, students were asked to allocate some time to study off-campus in order to make new friends and "experience the beauty of love." At this time, students still have to do homework, but not quite the usual ones: keep travel diaries, make personal growth reports, do needlework or shoot videos about their travels.

An article about Fan Mei's creativity went viral on Weibo, gaining almost 130 million views in two days after publication. "Why not popularize it all over the country?", – commented one reader. "Sichuan is really strong in increasing the birth rate!" another responded.