This Shanghai school has provided its students with a sexual joke as a “light and funny” text to study English. Chinese netizens are now making a joke of the school and the book it uses.

A private international school in Shanghai has given its 8th-grade students some remarkable homework to study English this winter holiday. Spoiler: it’s about pubic hair and extramarital sex.

The English text in the book, that has now gone viral on Chinese social media, is called “Mommy’s Washcloth” (妈妈的抹布). It is listed in the category “light and funny” and goes as follows:

Mommy’s Washcloth

There was a little boy whose mother was about to have a baby. One day the little boy walked in and saw his mother naked, he asked his mother what was the hair in between her legs? She responded, “It’s my washcloth.” Weeks later after the mother had the baby, the young boy walked in on his mother again, but while she was in the hospital the doctor shaved her pubic hair, and the boy asked his mother: “What happened to your washcloth?” The mother responded, “I lost it.”

The little boy, trying to be helpful, set out to find his mother’s washcloth. A few days later the little boy went running to his mother yelling and screaming, “I found your washcloth!” The mother thinking that the child was just playing went along with the boy and asked, “Where did you find it?” The boy answered, “The maid has it and she’s washing daddy’s face with it.”

The homework assignment was for children to write down their thoughts on the story.

The joke itself is not new; a quick online search shows that it has since long been featured on various websites listing ‘dirty jokes.’

The remarkable text started attracting the attention of netizens when parents complained about it in various WeChat groups. It was then picked up by Chinese news outlet Caixin on January 23rd.

The joke is reportedly featured in the 2018 version of a homework textbook that was originally published in 2009 by Beijing Atomic Energy Press, and has been distributed nationwide. The book is focused on stimulating pupils to learn English in a “light,” “creative,” and “active” way.

The school that gave its pupils this homework is the SMIC Private School (中芯学校), which, somewhat ironically, says in its mission statement that: “It is our belief that students should be instilled with proper values, and schools share in this responsibility.”

Although the Shanghai school was not available for comments, Sina News reports, the Beijing publishing house did give a statement today, saying they were aware of the issue and were in the process of recalling the textbook.

On Weibo, however, many people seem to appreciate the “creative” English texts and find it funny.

Others just complain about the language difficulty level of the joke: “As a university student, I must admit, I still can’t understand this,” one person wrote, with others adding: “Surely the pupils won’t be able to understand it anyway!”

This is not the first time a Chinese textbook causes controversy online for its content. In 2017, a sexual education textbook caused a stir in China for being “too explicit.”

By Manya Koetse and Miranda Barnes

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