Parents' age-old quest for better education

There is an old senryu (humorous or witty 17-syllable verse) that reads: "Hey mother/Moving again?/Mencius asks."

This verse is based on an old anecdote involving Mencius' mother, who is said to have changed homes three times to find the most appropriate location for educating her son.

The family is said to have moved from a place near a graveyard to a place near a market and then to a place near a school. This illustrates the difficulty in finding an ideal educational environment because a place full of hope, once lived in, will turn into a place of disappointment.