A teacher at a school in southern China who was shown in a viral video scrubbing make-up from girls’ faces with a wet towel when they arrived for the new semester told them, “A student should look like she is supposed to.” The teacher at a secondary school in Guizhou province grinned while he cleaned girls’ faces with the same towel – dipping it in a bucket of water, wringing it and then wiping the next student’s face, Jiangsu Television reported. The broadcaster did not name the school to protect the identity of the girls, who appeared to be teenagers. The video, which was shot this week, showed another member of staff stopping uncooperative students from covering their faces with their hands. “About 80 per cent of students here are left-behind children,” a school representative told reporters. “Due to the absence of parents’ company and education, they may be led into extreme directions in aesthetics and life values. “A big group of students were lured by one student to wear make-up. It’s a common and serious phenomenon on campus,” he said. The representative admitted it was “not appropriate” for staff to remove students’ make-up by force, but the school was determined to “show its responsibility for the students”. Jiangsu Television quoted the school as saying that it had tried to ban students from wearing heavy make-up many times, but they ignored the order. Chinese school sparks sexism row after urging boys to grow ‘heroically’ and girls to be ‘tranquil’ The representative said that after the incident, fewer students wore cosmetics. The video met with an angry reaction on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service. “A towel and a bucket of water for all students? That’s too unsanitary,” wrote one user. “A male teacher touches female students – is that a sort of sexual harassment?” “What the teacher did hurts students’ dignity, and the school should reflect on whether it’s good for students to do this in public,” another wrote. One contributor sympathised with the end, writing: “I think it’s reasonable to forbid students from having make-up because they are still young and the cosmetics hurt their skins.”