You are listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin, joined by Yushan and Feifei.
Coming up soon.
Schools across China are holding Class Super League, aiming to introduce kids to a high-stakes environment of competition, but it does so in a way that rewards bravery over perfection.
And New live streaming channels designed for dogs and cats are getting popularity.
How beneficial can they be for your beloved pets?
Let's find out.
But before that…
This spring, something exciting is happening on school playgrounds across China.
From Beijing to Xi'an in northwest China's Shanxi province, more students are heading to the field.
In a wave of high-energy, class Super League matches, kids are running passing, cheering and discovering something bigger than just football confidence teamwork, resilience all unfolding in real time right there on the grass.
So what's really driving this movement?
What is class super league?
And can this really help children grow, learn and connect?
Well, I think when it comes to Class Super League.
Well, it's not just about football matches.
Ooh, more games.
Yeah, it can cover a range of sports.
For example, it can be basketball matches or volleyball, or some schools are also offering swimming competitions or even kicking jianz the shuttlecocks.
So it's depending on the schools and the cities.
But basically, the Chinese name for it is called Banchao Class Super League.
It's sort of an initiative that school sports is offering to all students um, not just a bunch of really good players on the campus, which i think in the past i mean most schools in the past is like some really elite, Very competent players are able to compete really on the ground.
Maybe only 11 students are selected to a school team, but now they're encouraging every student participate in at least one sort of team competition each semester.
I don't understand.
Previously in my generation, we do have PE classes.
We also learn these different sports.
We have tests, different types of tests.
We do push-ups.
Well, boys do push-ups.
Girls do sit ups.
And also we do also have these kind of sports matches.
The matches sometimes is school based, meaning that each and every, I think, class would select athletes from the class and attend the school match sports game.
And we also have city games in the sense that well, that's the situation Fei Fei have just described.
That is, you select the real, real athletes from the entire school to attend those kind of competitions.
So what's new this time?
Why is this making a buzz on the internet?
Well, I think it's, first of all, more inclusive.
For me when I was a student.
I'm the person who is sitting by, you know, on the outskirts of all kind of any kind of sports competition out there.
I won't be involved simply because I'm not so good at it.
But right now, with this class super league, the Banqiao, all schools and basically all of the city, they're trying to involve as many students as possible.
If you're not really a good soccer player, maybe try basketball.
If basketball is not your thing, maybe try swimming or even just swimming.
Kicking jianzi would also be an option for you.
So I would say it's more inclusive.
And also it runs a little longer than simply.
You know, for example, we have this kind of sports event every semester, but it's more about one or two day event.
But now it can last for a whole month or even longer than that.
So it sort of guarantee you that you, as a student, no matter what kind of sports you are interested in or whether you are good at any sport at all, you can get the chance of getting into the playground, be part of the matches.
And winning or losing, it doesn't really matter.
But you guaranteed a certain period of time of your day out to actually get active and get physical.
Yeah, I really like how you concluded, Fei-Fei, because that's also how I feel.
We've been talking about PE class. for at least two, three times on Roundtable in the past year.
And what I see is that a progressive kind of movement that's getting more kids involved in the first place, but also here, as we see Banqiao happening, it's pushing this whole movement to a competitive side of PE, because previously, if it's about yeah, we're enhancing the education for PE teachers or we're hiring more coaches when it comes to sports for the primary and secondary school kids, but now it's like we want the kids to get competitive, we want them to enjoy PE sports and competing against each other.
I find it very funny because right before the show we talked about the fact that for my generation, usually every week we get one or two PE classes, meaning that you got around 80 minutes of PE classes the entire week.
And of course you have the breaks between different classes.
You can go run around, but that's for those who really love sports.
For me, I would just sit in my seat and chat with my friends.
So that was the situation.
So I was kind of like thinking huh, nowadays kids have at least one or two classes, PE classes, every single day.
Every single day they must go out and enjoy quote unquote, depending on your personality the outdoor activity for around one hour or even two hours.
So I was thinking oh, this is a way for the PE teachers to get creative, can have something to fill out the content of their classes, because they are having so many more classes and they're running out of content.
And this really is a good way.
And if you think about the situation here in Beijing, in Beijing, education authorities say that the league, the Class Super League, will host around 400000 competitions in 2026, with participation expected to exceed 10 million students across primary and secondary schools.
So the scale is definitely also quite impressionable.
And when it comes to getting students out there, getting them active, because my daughter is right now a primary school student.
And they do have that quote unquote infrastructure, meaning they do have, I think, one hour, more than one hour, of getting going outdoors doing some kind of exercises.
But she, as a 10 year old, is not that sporty.
So when I checked on her, you know, what do you do on your PE classes?
I mean, do your teacher assign you any tasks to do?
And she said yeah, we would be told to running on the tracks for about four or five rounds of that track.
But after two we'll just stop and we're just walking on that playground and then just chatting with my friends.
That's not very active.
That's not the purpose of the PE class, I would imagine.
But there isn't much that she's interested in.
So she would take PE classes as an opportunity of chatting with her friends walking around, which is not very active to my from my perspective you know she's a 10 year old walking is definitely not a sport.
But I'm not really sure how to get her involved.
So I think this is the method of involving these kind of not really sure what they're doing, just walking around chatting on the playground students.
I think it's because a lot of the kids, including your daughter, as you described her Fei Fei they just haven't really find a sport that they love, that they can dive into and really enjoy.
Because yeah, we're still right now, at least at the stage where educators and government officials are really comes to the point that elites means that the idea of becoming or cultivating elites mean not only a good grace, and good grace is far from enough.
We need a holistic development in these kids.
And PE is something that should be promoted.
And we're talking about it because it's getting a bit more national these days.
But for some other, some certain provinces, some certain cities and schools.
They've been doing it for quite a while and they're gaining results.
They are looking at kids getting much more active and they are also up leveling their game.
I noticed in one school.
One thing very funny happening is that because they have been hosting this kind of event, class-based football matches
They've even implanted certain kind of smart gadgets in the playground so that all of the moves, the strategies being used by the team of that class can be recorded, and they can even reflect the data real-time adjacent to the playground.
So kids would be, they would have this feeling that they're not playing around.
It's very professional.
They get to see the angle of one ball they're kicking out, whether or not they're doing a good job.
Wow.
Where to improve the next time?
I don't know if they can be future superstars in football, but the experience is real and the excitement and the fun and the fact that they feel like they're professional athletes, not just primary school kids running around in the playground.
So that is also quite important, giving them the real, holistic and entire kind of experience.
I think that's basically the fun of any sports, really.
Right, the sense of accomplishment.
Yeah, and also when you check on any sports fan out there, no matter if they're in football basketball volleyball, ping pong, whatever they are really in for the competitive edge of all these kinds of competitive sports.
Who is winning?
Who's losing?
What kind of strategies are they using?
What's your advantages?
What are my disadvantages?
And how can I plan this strategically so I'm still on the winning side?
And I think that's the fun of any sport.
Currently, when we are talking about PE classes, teaching football, basketball is more.
It's sort of taking that competitive side out of that sport.
Teaching them the skills, giving them different sessions so that they can practice.
It's a training session rather than a competition.
So it's not fun from a children's point interview, you know.
No, just shooting the balls to a goal without a goalkeeper is not, definitely not making soccer fun.
Yeah, that is why, for those schools that have already been doing this for several years, Kids are enjoying it.
They're not only playing the class Super League, they're also practicing, actively practicing during class breaks.
They're running out, so that their little teammates can practice together, so they can perform better.
The next one, and there have been other achievements as well.
For example, again here in Beijing in the first half of 2025 997 that's a really high percentage.
997 of Beijing's primary and secondary schools had various class-based competitions a total of 194000 matches with around 5 million students participating as well.
And we talked about this year, We're hoping that 10 million students would participate.
It is already arranged.
And we're looking also at other parts of school life being improved because of better percentage of students engaged, actively engaged, in sports activities.
And I'm going to take this topic on a little bit of a detour, but it's something really interesting that I observed in the past few months.
You know, sometimes when you see advertisement on kids products, especially when it comes to shoes and smartwatches for children nowadays, I noticed something really interesting is that they tend to promote their design, especially when it comes to outdoor gears.
Like for shoes, our shoes are especially designed for children to navigate the nature steadier.
And this is waterproof so that the kids can go mountaineering safely along with their parents.
You see those kids in the advertisement, they're skiing, they're doing mountaineering.
And what I really find fascinating is the fact that girls are doing it together with boys.
Now, all three of us sitting here are ladies and we've all more or less expressed how we kind of want to escape to PE class, or that is not for us.
But nowadays, as we see Ban Chao promoting that kind of even I'm not sure if I'm putting it correctly the aggressiveness in sports among kids, both for the girls and for the boys.
I think we're really kind of shifting on an idea here that girls, when it comes to sports, shouldn't be expected to do any less.
And everybody, boys and girls, can have the right to rest if they feel like it.
And girls running outside getting all sweaty and getting all muddy and enjoying sports like their male peers is something that should be encouraged.
And that is not a sign of any sort of quote-unquote masculinity anymore.
And I really enjoy this kind of phenomenon that our younger generation seem to be enjoying nowadays.
As you mentioned, 997 of the schools here in Beijing are practicing out on that and it's really worth celebrating.
And, of course, girls nowadays, kids nowadays.
We grow up seeing the success and the middle earning points of Eileen Gu, of Chen Hong Chan and Sun Yingsha.
You know, I'm naming the celebrated female athletes here in China.
And yeah, these are all great role models for all our kids out there to cultivate this interest and passion for sports ever since a young age.
Yeah, that's the kids' perspective.
And from a mom's perspective, I've recently learned that Before the age of 12, a certain part in your brain is still very actively developing and a very important element in the developing stage is exercising.
You have to do different types of exercising for that part to really develop to a stage that is beneficial to the entirety of your life.
Making sure that you can focus.
You can stay in the stage of so focusing and learning for long enough time.
And you have the ability to sit there and concentrate on the content, no matter if you're reading or you're listening.
And all that have something to do with enough focus. outdoor time, enough exercise in your life.
So this can really by saying this, I mean such activities can really impact students' performance in academic performances and their lifelong development.
And we also know that such activities can and in a lot of cases have already impacted students' school life.
Yeah, for example, I think students getting into first of all in any sort of collective sports event, they will learn how to do teamwork.
Oh, that's also very important.
You need to plan your role and you need to accept your role and know what your role is supposed to do in your team.
And also, i think, a schooling shaman.
They're also designing students to take home the jobs like announcers, referees.
So you know that.
Different roles in a match yes, there are different roles in the match and you can each role is important.
It's not just about the star and also it's also about resilience.
You know accepting you will fail.
Along somewhere along the line, you will meet failure.
It's okay.
It's also very nice to be winning from time to time, but you will also fail and it's okay yes, so i think the conclusion is simple class, super league, super cool.
Let's continue doing it.
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Chinese tech giant launches 24-7 channel for pets.
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This is roundtable with me, yushan and feifei.
As a pet owner yushan, would you subscribe to a pet um, specialize the tv channel and leave the tv on 24 7 for your cats?
Yes really, without a doubt.
Yes, do you know what's on the channel?
Do you guys have any idea?
It's How hard it is to get your pet occupied, not sitting there and sleeping and have nothing to do all day long when you are not at home and there's nothing else that he or she can interact with.
I thought the pet can find their own joy, their own way.
Yes, and they're living in a place where they have water, they have food, they have a lot of toys they can play with.
Then they can watch birds.
That's something cats do.
Why do they need a pet-focused streaming channel?
What's on that channel?
I think what you're mentioning is the recent promotion from Chinese tech giant Tencent Video.
It is the creator of the Pet TV, China's first streaming channel curated specifically for dogs and cats.
Launched on March 20.
The channel is really available to the platform's VIP subscribers and is costing roughly 25 yuan per month.
It features videos for specific dog breeds, including Labradors, Pugs and cavalier king charlie spaniels.
And so so are they selecting the programs for human and play them for pets like pet related program, or are they shooting something new Like a dog-themed TV series?
I'm not sure.
I think that's really something for the pets to watch.
I think it includes different types of lights.
For example, the Tencent video stated that the widespread adoption of their LED and OLED screens means that cats can see images more clearly through their live stream.
According to the company, moving images of birds, fish and various electronic cat toys featuring yellow and blue help cats to track on-screen content really accurate.
So that's something sounds like I can become a customer of, to be honest.
So we're not only talking about the kind of content that are selected for cats, but also the content that are made a tailor made for different Pets breeds, different breeds and mainly different breeds in cats and dogs, because they accept or they can recognize the different types of wave and they can listen to different frequencies other than human.
Yeah, I think for dogs, for example.
I think I read somewhere that dogs can only see fewer colors, mainly in blues and yellows.
So when it comes to, for example, the images put on these channels could be adjusted accordingly.
And when it comes to cats, I think they are very more sensitive compared to human to a lot of movements.
So fast, naturalistic motions can capture their attention.
And also when it comes to sounds.
I think different animals have different reactions to higher pitch noise or natural sound can also stimulate or calm their emotions.
So not only do I have to compete with my kids for the remote control, now I have to compete with my cat.
Exactly.
I think that's exactly what's going on in One of our colleagues home.
She has a cat and she downloads videos.
That's under the title Cat TV on Bilibili.
And she plays it on her iPad for her cat every time she goes back home.
And sometimes when she goes back home, the cat is already waiting next to the iPad.
You know, it's a way of showing, I want to watch TV now, turn it on.
Okay, so now I have to ask do you think this is something that is really helping the animals in the homes?
Because we know yes, they're domestic animals, but they do have different personality, cat-tonality or dog-tonality.
So some of them might enjoy social life a bit more.
But do you think we are doing this really helping them?
Or do you think it's basically something that people do so they feel better about leaving their pets home alone?
Both.
From the pet's perspective, I think more for the dogs than for the cats because, yeah.
People they get, especially for urban dwellers.
We get out and go to work and leave them staying at home for a long time.
And also according to a survey conducted by Tencent Video, really 66 of dog owners reported leaving the TV on for their dogs when they go out.
And that's proved to be helpful.
So, yeah, certainly have just...
Make sure they're not just sitting there and feeling depressed and lonely and missing you, and that they have something fun to interact with.
This is not something only happening here in China.
There's a dog TV that was launched in California in 2012.
Apparently, pet owners all around the world are dying to find different ways to make their pets happier.
Yay!
Let us know what would you do.
Would you subscribe to A Pet TV?
I'm Niu Holin with Fei Fei and De Yushan.
Thank you for listening.
Bye-bye.
