It’s good to be old in China. You get to do whatever you want, say whatever you want, and generally get away with it—it’s basically the same as being a teenager in the West, except people all unequivocally respect you.

So when a 92 year-old scholar took to the stage yesterday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to give a speech to some 6,000 post-secondary graduate students, you’d expect people to listen. But, as the People’s Daily Online reported, they didn’t.

Photos show a wide number of students sleeping in the back rows.

What makes this incident even more embarrassing is that the speaker, Wu Liangyong, had last been at the Great Hall of the People to receive the nation’s highest award for achievement in science and technology in 2012.

This very prominent example of disrespect towards one’s elders in one of the nation’s most important venues is an enormous loss of face for these students. As such, netizens took this chance to explain how they would have done better in the same situation.

Here are some comments:

倚苍穹：
First, not just anyone is allowed to go to the Great Hall of the People, so it’s a good guess to say these students were all “hand-picked” to be present for this speech. Second, am I right to assume this scholar chose a complicated topic of academia to speak about in his speech? Students have become numb to this type of content since they have been constantly bombarded with it. Third, any time you let me attend such a speech, I can guarantee you that I won’t fall asleep. [pitiful.emoji]

于超yzc：
Anyone able to attend the Great Hall of the People is fortunate! And yet, for 30 minutes these people can’t keep it together!

韩波MUSIC：
These are the best students as determined by the gaokao (university placement system). [haha.emoji]

请悟空当救兵：
You can’t just blame the students.

站起来像没站起来的我要站起来了：
How many people are there that want to listen, but aren’t able to? How many people that listen, but don’t cherish these words?

兰若寺燕赤霞：
Stongly propose to revoke the qualifications of these sleeping graduate students. Kick them back to being undergrads, and make them take the tests again.

可可橘：
Once (these people) become officials, they will take turns sleeping. They will sleep during meetings, they will sleep through their first mistress, second mistress, x number of mistresses.

大YOYO的小咸咸：
Are they all sleeping face down on the desks because… there’s no place to lie down?

The biggest shock to everyone must be how the public is more familiar to seeing people photographed and recorded while being wide awake at the Great Hall of the People.

Photos: cyol