Golden Star of the Week
My daughter was awarded "Golden Star of the Week", she excitedly showed me the certificate, which is a yellow A4 paper with many stars on it. There are printed words with handwriting and signature and date:
This is to certify that Brenda Sheng has settled really well into nursery routines. Well done!
On the upper left corner, there is a green round sticker, with clever bunny (a long ear rabbit!)in the middle, around the bunny is a sentence: Mrs Douglas says, I am a clever bunny.
Three Good Student and Excellent Class Cadre
This made me recall some funny awards when I was in school. The highest honour is "Three Good Student", Three good(s) are good in study, attitude and health, which means you have highest examination score, and actively take part in sports and be your teacher's good boy. Sometimes, one merit can cover a hundred flaws, one good can complement other disadvantage. I was not so good at outdoor sports, and doesn't like ball games and never go to gym. Although I am very healthy.
Excellent Class Cadre is only awarded to class cadres. In a socialism system, from village to Central Party Committee, all public servants are called cadre, such as village cadres, town cadres, county cadres, province cadres, and central cadres. This hierarchical system was reflected in in school, there was one Chairman in the class, then vice-chairman, discipline commissar, Culture and Leisure Commissar, Study (or Academic) commissar, sports commissar; then the next hierarchy is representatives, such as Chinese representative, maths representative, English representative, Science representative, etc. A class were normally divided into four groups, every group had a group leader. Group leaders are the lowest level CADRES which normally have no chance to be awarded as Excellent Class Cadre.
Nowadays, the title of Class Chairman has been changed to Class President, or chief after Chairman Mao's died.