---
title: "Why Primary and Secondary Schools Are Banning Campus Convenience Stores"
description: "China's education authorities have issued a notice banning convenience stores and supermarkets in primary and secondary schools, ending an era that shaped generations of childhood memories. The move addresses health concerns over junk food and corruption in school management."
author: "刘鑫"
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published: "2021-08-04"
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# Why Primary and Secondary Schools Are Banning Campus Convenience Stores

> China's education authorities have issued a notice banning convenience stores and supermarkets in primary and secondary schools, ending an era that shaped generations of childhood memories. The move addresses health concerns over junk food and corruption in school management.

**Click to read the original text for details**
Source: Real Story Project Author: Liu Xin
**"Recently, the Ministry of Education and other departments issued a notice that primary and secondary schools are not allowed to set up convenience stores or supermarkets. As the 'moonlight' in the hearts of generations of Chinese children, the campus convenience store is about to become history."**
Born into a family of doctors, Lo Ta-yu was expected by his family to become a doctor. At age 6, he began learning classical piano, and was hit on the hand for mistakes. In such a serious family atmosphere, the school convenience store became a haven for his childhood. It had everything: Zhuge Silang comics, Devil Party snacks, and more.
Years later, as a musician, Lo Ta-yu turned these experiences into the song "Childhood," with the lyric: "The welfare store has everything, but my pockets are empty." The welfare store was the convenience store near primary and secondary schools in Taiwan.
"Childhood" was covered by singer Cheng Fangyuan in 1986 and became a hit in mainland China, making Lo Ta-yu a household name. To this day, "Childhood" remains an unsurpassed classic in Chinese-language songs for reminiscing about youth.
The convenience store that kept the music maestro restless gradually entered mainland school campuses with the spread of "Childhood." In the 1980s and 1990s, as the market economy was just starting, convenience stores emerged as a new phenomenon.
Initially selling only school supplies, they gradually expanded to include instant noodles, spicy strips, and other snacks, and later, savvy owners added comic books.
In strictly disciplined schools, the convenience store was a promised land of milk and honey. Parents, just emerging from an era of material scarcity, gave their children pocket money, and the convenience stores stocked with candy, instant noodles, ice cream, and spicy strips became the children's spending paradise.
Every time the bell rang, children with change would swarm to the store window like ducklings waiting to be fed, scrambling. Ice packs for one jiao, spicy strips for five jiao—the owner had to collect money, hand over goods, and maintain order.
The student days of the post-80s and post-90s generations were the golden age of convenience stores.
From the recollections of those who experienced it, we can glimpse the fervor of Chinese children for these stores. Post-90s writer Yan Zhen wrote in "The Water Margin Cards Fooled Us for Twenty Years" that to collect all the cards, he and his friends scoured convenience stores, buying all the instant noodles, one store after another.
Lu Yu, a ninth-grade student at Mianyang No. 11 Middle School in Sichuan, said: "The convenience store is our charging station; we feel empty without spicy strips."
On the Chinese internet, a search for "a shared memory: campus convenience stores" yields 5.88 million web pages.
These records cover not only childhood snack brands like Dinosaur Egg, Traffic Light, and Dae Jang Geum, but also local accounts specific to counties or towns, and even nostalgic pieces about particular school stores. In an unofficial survey, the most desired family environment for primary school students was to run a convenience store.
The obsession of primary and secondary school students with convenience stores once worried educators. In September 2003, Wang Lanjiang, a teacher at Yutian No. 1 Middle School in Hebei, wrote in the journal *Teaching and Management* about campus convenience stores: "Contracting out school convenience stores may distort students' outlook on life, values, and money, leading them to pursue decadent and extravagant lifestyles in society."
The music maestro's classic song and countless folk memories paint a glorious picture, yet the convenience store is now at a dead end.
In April 2019, the Ministry of Education and other departments issued the "Regulations on the Management of School Food Safety and Nutrition and Health," stipulating that primary and secondary schools and kindergartens generally should not set up food business premises such as convenience stores or supermarkets within campuses. If truly necessary, they must obtain permits and avoid selling high-salt, high-sugar, and high-fat foods.
Recently, the Ministry of Education, along with the National Health Commission and other four departments, issued another notice tightening controls: primary and secondary schools are absolutely not allowed to set up convenience stores or supermarkets.
Campus convenience stores have officially become history.
The 3.15 Gala in early 2019 exposed a spicy strip factory called "Shrimp Egg." Located in a field in rural Henan, the workshop was filled with pungent spicy strip smell, and workers without any hygiene protection toiled amid dust and oil stains.
On the production line, dough balls splattered, and buckets contained murky liquid like industrial wastewater, covered with a layer of black grease, resembling swill.
In the ingredient workshop were fertilizer-like woven bags containing more than a dozen additives such as mono- and diglycerides and sucralose. Workers mixed them in certain proportions, stirred them with the dough balls on the line, bagged and sealed them, and sent them to thousands of campus convenience stores. These disgusting spicy strips were ultimately consumed by children.
After the problematic spicy strips were exposed, local TV stations followed up on some schools. A small girl in a school uniform was seen walking while eating a bag of orange spicy strips. A reporter asked if what she was eating was hygienic. She looked up, bewildered, and said she didn't know.
Young customers lack the ability to discern, while merchants buy cheap defective products to pursue excess profits, even dumping near-expiry or expired products. Food hygiene inspections in many places have found that campus convenience stores are often distribution centers for counterfeit and shoddy goods. Spicy strips are just one type of problematic snack sold there.
On May 12, 2015, Chen Yuxi, a sophomore boy at Chongqing Middle School in Chongzhou, Sichuan, bought a bottle of drink from the school store. After taking a sip, he noticed the taste was off and realized the drink was about to expire.
Angry, Chen used his knowledge to write a "Denunciation of the Convenience Store," condemning the store for selling expired food to students as "unjust, disloyal, unkind, and untrustworthy." After the denunciation was published, the school said it would reform the store and encourage teachers and students to report violations.
Some campus convenience stores even sold cigarettes and alcohol to minors. In December 2020, a store opposite Haigui Middle School in Qionghai sold cigarettes to students in uniform at 2 yuan each.
When inspectors from the Qionghai Tobacco Monopoly Bureau came, the clerk denied it, but cigarettes were found in the bottom of the cash box and in a cardboard box on the wall. The clerk then sheepishly said they wouldn't sell them anymore.
Profit-driven convenience stores could even threaten children's lives. A supermarket at a junior high school in Ye County, Henan, sold four boxes of spoiled cream cakes, causing 300 students to be poisoned. In Qijiang County, Sichuan, a primary school store owner bought expired candies to save money, leading to 160 students being poisoned.
Convenience stores became a nightmare for primary and secondary school students. Local governments continuously introduced policies to control campus stores to ensure food safety.
In 2017, Guangzhou issued a document advocating that campus stores not sell spicy wheat products, candies, carbonated drinks, and other foods harmful to students' health. To better implement the policy, the education department cooperated with the local supply and marketing cooperative to create a campus store brand called "Chengpinxuan" to ensure reliable food sources.
Convenience stores once provided supplementary food and nutrition to students during a specific period. However, with social development, the intake of junk foods high in salt, sugar, and fat threatens the health of young people. Convenience stores clearly exacerbated this trend.
Official data show that the overweight and obesity rate among Chinese children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 is 16%, and it is still increasing. The incidence of hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and diabetes among children is on the rise.
In the 2017-2018 school year, physical examination results for primary and secondary school students in Shenzhen showed a malnutrition rate (including wasting and stunting) of 9.71%, an obesity rate of 8.31%, and an iron-deficiency anemia rate of 3.13%. While at school, unhealthy snacks like spicy strips and sodas sold at campus stores were undoubtedly one of the causes.
The convenience store, once the "moonlight" in the hearts of countless Chinese children, became a target of criticism not only for harming health. As a commercial venue, it conflicts with the social function of schools as non-profit institutions.
Campus stores, located within schools and facing young consumers with limited legal capacity, operate as a monopoly with highly asymmetric information.
Campus stores are usually contracted out through bidding for a certain period. In April of this year, a video of a live auction for the three-year contract of a convenience store at Xinning No. 2 Middle School in Shaoyang, Hunan, went viral online.
A group of masked, indistinguishable people gathered in a hall resembling a school auditorium, eagerly raising their paddles to bid. Media confirmed that after multiple rounds of bidding among 18 bidders, the contract was finally sold for 3.2 million yuan.
Similarly, the three-year contract for the convenience store at Gaoyao No. 2 Middle School in Zhaoqing fetched a staggering 7.28 million yuan. Some calculated that the monthly contract fee was over 200,000 yuan, and even accounting for winter and summer vacations, the daily rent was at least 6,600 yuan.
Even after paying over 7 million, shrewd businessmen could still profit. Some schools, after receiving huge contract fees, turned a blind eye to management. There were cases where schools prohibited students from freely entering or leaving campus to protect the store's interests.
In an environment with a stable customer base and closed off like a state within a state, the store owner's only principle was to maximize profits in the short term.
Schools acting as protectors not only strengthened the monopoly but also allowed price increases. After a school contracted out its store, students found that the same goods cost 0.5 to 1 yuan more than outside, sometimes several times higher.
Monopoly breeds excessive profits, and excessive profits distort everything. As non-profit institutions, schools with contract fees from stores and canteens had a "slush fund" for internal benefits and allowances.
This process of benefit transfer easily breeds corruption. A principal of a primary school affiliated with Sun Yat-sen University accepted a 50,000 yuan bribe from a contractor and was sentenced to one year in prison.
A middle school principal in Liangping County, Chongqing, accepted 485,000 yuan in kickbacks over three years and was sentenced to five years. In Guiping, Guangxi, a middle school principal was prosecuted for corruption for using supermarket contract fees to set up a "slush fund" and distributing it to other school committee members as overtime pay.
The convenience store was a festering sore in school management. In July, when the ban on campus stores was announced, the most common reaction online was: "What about the relatives of school leaders?" The profitable store naturally became a focus of power struggles within schools.
A widely circulated story goes: A junior high school store was thriving. The vice principal quickly placed a relative there and made a fortune. Then, the dean of students proposed closing the store, citing the large amount of garbage generated by students shopping there, and the principal agreed. The store closed for six months.
Six months later, the dean began advocating that students should supplement their nutrition and stationery at school, and the store, which had been closed for half a year, was renovated and reopened, now run by his relative.
In April 2019, Wang Hongjie, former director of the Mouding County Education Bureau, was taken away by the discipline inspection commission. He became a principal at 28 and rose from a primary school teacher. After becoming the "top leader" of the county's education system in April 2012, he first arranged for his father to contract the convenience store at Jiangpo Primary School, and then his sister contracted the store at Maoyang Middle School.
Next, he arranged for relatives to contract the canteen and undertake projects. On February 21, 2020, Wang Hongjie was dismissed from public office for accepting bribes.
The post-80s and post-90s generations who reminisce about convenience stores might not imagine that such a small shop could hide so much filth. The micro-corruption in these stores is deeply detested by society. In 2019, Santai County in Mianyang resolutely closed more than 100 campus stores at once.
After this ban, except for a very few parents worried about their children going hungry during school, people almost unanimously applauded the demise of convenience stores. Looking back at their former glory is bittersweet.
As convenience stores become history, the canteen will be the only remaining source of revenue on campus. Relevant departments have maintained high pressure on campus canteen hygiene and safety, with various regulatory measures introduced. To paraphrase a joke: "The time for leaders' relatives to make money is running out."
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