Chinese parents are keen on a more Confucian education

AT FIRST GLANCE, Huaguoshan kindergarten in Zhuzhou, a city in the southern province of Hunan, looks much like any other nursery. Four brightly painted playrooms have buckets of building bricks and soft, coloured mats. But on higher floors, the classrooms are more spartan. Rice-paper lanterns and a row of black roof tiles running along the top of the walls evoke ancient Chinese architecture. Children wear powder-blue fleeces with the mandarin collars and frog fasteners of traditional jackets. Large portraits of Confucius hang on otherwise bare walls.