Zhang Guimei is a veteran educator working at a middle school for girls in Yunnan Province in the southwest of China. She rises up before dawn every day to prepare her middle school students for a day of Spartan-style living and studying. Some of Zhang’s students compared her with Zhou Bapi, a crooked landlord in a popular Chinese novel, who imitates the sound of a crowing cock at midnight in order to awaken his farm hands and squeeze out of them several extra hours of work before daybreak. But why? Join us to find out.