Pity the already overburdened Beijing school kids who spend their youth cramming information into their cranium in the hope of winning a rare place in a respected university. Now they have an extra subject to come to terms with as the nation is being whipped into a frenzy in preparation for 2008: Olympic Knowledge.
Primary schools have already added the subject to the curriculum and secondary schools in the capital will start the special classes after the Chinese New Year holiday. The extra classes are an effort to combat the fact that China lacks a grassroots sporting culture, officials said, so the young people must be taught about the significance of the games and the features of each sport before the international hoards descend on the city.
The text books, needless to say, are also highly supportive of the Communist Party and the leaders' role in running the show, saying that the International Olympic Committee awarded Beijing the games in recognition of 'the truly great progress the country has made in recent years'.
Laden with statistics, the fact the new subject is included in university entrance exams means students have to take it seriously.
'It's too much work, we can never find the time to study everything,' groaned 16-year-old Li Dongfang. He already studies till 10pm every night, including weekends, and complains that he is rarely allowed time to meet his friends or watch TV.
In addition to the regular subjects and the newly added Olympic studies, Dongfang and his classmates must also master Communist Party theory, ranging from the thoughts of Marx and Mao - although their ideologies bear scant relevance to modern China - to Hu Jintao's latest abstruse comments on 'furthering the advancement of the Party'.