School days once more

Meng and her friends designed the three-hour event consisting of three lessons. The lessons start with a class meeting and participants are requested to wear red scarves as if they were in primary school and introduce themselves like they would on the first day of school.

Participants are then divided into teams to take lessons and play games from the 1980s.

"What we do during the three hours is exactly how we spent our school life when we were young and innocent — it was easier to be satisfied and make true friends then. I want to have that feeling again in a classroom setting," Meng says.

To help participants recall moments from their childhood, Meng gives quizzes about cartoons, lyrics of children's songs and familiar texts from Chinese textbooks. She offers childhood snacks as rewards and has designed a five-minute eye exercise guided by a recorded music accompanied with audio between lessons, just like the routine of a school day.

Meng says the lessons take her back to her school days and allow her to break the ice meeting new people as they can find common ground.

After the event, the group of strangers have become classmates with shared memories.

"It is quite different from other social events I have attended, which were not well organized or relaxing. The lessons from our childhood remind me of the purely happy moment in classrooms," says Chris Zhuang, who works in advertising.