Write or wrong: Children struggle with characters

A campaign is afoot in Chinese schools to improve children's literacy, as educators have warned that young people are increasingly having problems writing and reading Chinese due to their extensive use of electronic devices, as well as a lack of attention paid to traditional culture.

Beginning this fall, elementary schools in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, have required 420,000 of their students to read classical texts for 20 minutes every morning, as well as practice writing Chinese characters for 20 minutes in the afternoon each day.

The "Get Close to the Mother Tongue" campaign began in the city's Wuchang district in 2010 and caught the eye of the Ministry of Education earlier this year. Now the ministry plans to roll out similar campaigns elsewhere in the country in an attempt to counteract a widespread problem referred to by some as "character amnesia".