A college instructor in Sichuan Province is disciplining students who show up late to class with an old school classic.
Wang Sijun, a second-year instructor at Chengdu College of University of Electronic Science and Technology, is tasking tardy students to copy the Chinese character biang - one of the most complex in usage - 1,000 times.
Wang said he was inspired during a trip to Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, the ancestral home of the character, where it is used to describe a wide, thick noodle.
Made up of 58 strokes, biang is a wrist-breaking behemoth so densely packed that it is not even available in computer fonts.
Wang's first student to be "biang'ed" initially thought it was "a joke." The student, surnamed Cheng, tapped out after writing the complicated character only 200 times.
Wang said he feels he found an elegant solution to the wave of tardiness plaguing his class.
An unnamed official at the college applauded Wang's policy, adding that students are "willing to go along with it."
"It's innovative and better than a boring lecture or physical labor as punishment," echoed a freshman at the school.
