Web Video / Weird school rules in Hong Kong

Weird school rules in Hong Kong (香港奇怪校規, Hēung-góng Kèih-gwaai Haauh-kwāi, lit. "Hong Kong weird school rules") is YouTube series by Smilemiann which covers, as the title explains, weird school rules in Hong Kong. The absurdity of these rules are played out through various skits, often satirizing the rules in question and by extension, secondary school life in Hong Kong.

The YouTube series is almost entirely in Cantonese and only has traditional Chinese subtitles (and not English ones), but all conversations listed on this site are translated into English for ease of reading (and Cantonese puns will be explained). In case anyone wants to view the series itself, the playlist for the series can be found here.

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Here are some of the weird tropes found in this series!

A – J

• Absurdly Divided School: Episode 9 mentions how in some schools, female students who were "ethnic minorities" were supposed to be separated from "regular" students in terms of time and location of taking classes.
  • In the episode's skit, the "ethnic minority" girl objects to Fat Tom citing this^note (he claimed that they were violating school rules because they were in contact with each other) as her mother was a (presumably ethnic Chinese) Hongkonger, making her "mixed-race at most".
  • On closer inspection, the news article cited in relation to this rule in the episode explicitly mentions that this sort of policy is apparently to prevent the girls from being in contact with boys (most likely for religious reasons), and because they did not speak Chinese — which was cited to be in violation to laws for discrimination and children's rights, as well as exhausting for schools' resources.
• Absurdly Powerful School Jurisdiction:
  • Several of the titular "weird school rules" featured in the series include forbidding students from doing innocuous things outside of the campus while wearing their school uniform, such as using their phone.
  • According to an Episode 17 skit, some schools required the students' parents to check their children's WhatsApp every day to see if they ever went out with their classmates.
• Accidental Pervert:
  • In an Episode 2 skit, a (male) prefect calls out a male student for wearing a black undershirt, saying it was against the rules. The male student then suggested that he take off his undershirt, which the prefect says was also against the rules. The male student then claims that Na-mei, a female student called out for having brown (and not black) hair, was also Going Commando, which the prefect tries to check as he ushers her aside to the girls' bathroom. Na-mei appears to be very offended and disgusted by this.
  • Later in the Episode 12 skit, several students ask the Principal why their school only allowed students to wear white undershirts, and that he could make the uniforms thicker so that the colour of the undershirt wouldn't show. The Principal replied that their school uniforms were thin for the sake of checking the colour of the students' undershirts (because, apparently, he wanted to ensure the students were wearing undershirts as it gets cold in the winter), to the girls' horror.
• Activist-Fundamentalist Antics: Episode 11 features a skit where a student "calls out" other students for not praying before 'eating' and tries to record down their names and classes (most likely for further punishment), even when the student "called out" was just eating a single sweet or taking medicine when ill.
• Adults Are Useless: In most of the episodes of the series, the teachers and Principal of local secondary schools are typically depicted to be unhelpful morons who enforce ridiculous school rules on their students, or even if they are sympathetic to students, tend to be Rules Lawyers with Skewed Priorities.
• Against My Religion: One of the "strange" rules cited at the end of Episode 1 is that some schools ban the consumption of pork and soda for religious reasons. YMMV on the pork one, though.
• Asian Speekee Engrish: In Episode 4, one of the skits is about how some schools force their students to speak only English while wearing their school uniforms, and Yan-yan, a student who goes to one such school in the skit, explains the rule as "No Cantonese wearing school uniform". Of course, since the entire series is set in Hong Kong and targeted towards a Chinese-speaking audience, it's less of an issue than it seems to be, and given the satirical nature of the series, it is possible that this is Intentional Engrish for Funny.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In an Episode 6 skit, the teacher announces a ban on bringing "expensive mobile phones" to school. The students respond by bemoaning that they are using iPhone 7 or 7+ models and had to use Mainland brands like Huawei or Xiaomi, and another remarks that his phone was an even more old-fashioned and cheap Nokia brick. The narrator then steps in and asks what the main issue with the students was, giving three seconds for the audience to answer. It turns out that the narrator's issue with the students was that all of their phones were way out of date (as of the time of the episode was released, in 2017), and that the iPhone 10 was the latest model (at the time).
  • In an Episode 14 skit, a boy tries to call over a teacher to discipline a girl who was in the bathroom for five minutes due to constipation^* The school rule prohibited "visiting the bathroom for more than four minutes", but ends up being told off by the teacher and is implied to be dragged away and arrested for "perverted behaviour" because he was standing near the girls' bathroom (which wasn't near the boys' bathroom) for more than four minutes, so the girl assumed he was The Peeping Tom.
• Bathroom Control: One of the most frequently cited "weird school rules" in the skits is teachers not permitting secondary school students to use the bathroom in class, often regardless of reason, and requiring students to fill out forms to do so. Since some of the skits are Ripped from the Headlines, this is very much Truth in Television for many students in Hong Kong.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Although most of the skits are performed in Cantonese, several English words are used as a result of "code-switching". More specifically, one of Episode 4's skits is Bilingual Dialogue between an everyman male student (who is speaking Cantonese) and a female student who goes to a school where students had to use English while wearing their uniform (who is speaking English in accordance to the rule).
• Boarding School of Horrors: In Episode 17, Fat Tom, who goes to Boarding School in the skit in question, complains that he had it the worst among an inter-school Misery Poker conversation because his school didn't allow phones or watching TV, he had to follow a timetable to have meals, and he couldn't even go home, which he considered to be worse than being in prison.
• Boyish Short Hair: In Episode 1, one of the weird rules discussed is that in some girls' schools, students aren't allowed to wear their hair in this hairstyle (specifically in styles shorter than their ears), and those that do must wear wigs. Given the style of the series, cue a skit making fun of this:
  Teacher: (at a student with Boyish Short Hair entering the school) Ay, this student's hair is too short [and] doesn't fit the standards, [you] need to wear a wig.
  Student: Sir, this is a wig, [my] real hair– (whips off her wig to reveal long, dark hair) –is actually long!
  (The student proudly walks through the school gates with the teacher left in Stunned Silence)
• Brick Joke: Episode 2 has a prefect call out students for wearing black undershirts or Going Commando, citing that the school only permitted wearing white undershirts. Episode 12 then has several students ask the Principal why this rule was the case and that he could just make the uniforms thicker so that the colour of the undershirt wouldn't show.
• Call-Back: In Episode 15's "Top 10 Weird School Rules in Hong Kong, in the Eyes of the Taiwanese", 4 of the rules were already covered in previous episodes of the series — the ban on non-white undershirts (Episodes 2 and 12), prohibiting wearing PE uniforms while entering/exiting the campus (Episode 12), forcing students with too-short hair to wear wigs (Episode 1), and making students fill out forms whenever they had to go to the bathroom in class (Episode 7, and later in Episode 19).
• Christmas Songs: Episode 2 mentions that some schools have banned singing Christmas songs during the holiday season.
• Creator Provincialism: The creators of the series are from Hong Kong, and they primarily focus on student life in Hong Kong. Episode 5 announces the plan for an international version of a "weird school rules" show, but it explicitly states a preference for a cast of different nationalities or ethnicities, most likely in recognition of this trope and an attempt to avoid Creator's Culture Carryover.
• Creepy Crossdresser: In Episode 3, the Casual Dress Day skit involves a boy wearing the qipao uniform of the female students because "[he] can wear whatever [he] want[s]", to which a female classmate reacts with disgust. He then tries to justify that there was nothing against the rules for a male student to wear the school uniform of the opposite sex on Casual Dress Day, but the teacher tells him to change his clothes and threatens him with a demerit if he doesn't, saying the school uniform is a representation of the school.
• Common Tongue:
  • Hong Kong has Cantonese as one, but Episode 18 discusses how many schools don't teach their students how to pronounce their Cantonese clearly and discourages them from using Cantonese in their written language.
  • The episode also speculates how Cantonese came to be the dominant language in Hong Kong, especially since many Chinese topolects were spoken in HK before the 1950s. The most likely reason for this is to use it as a Common Tongue, but according to the episode, urban legend has it that the government originally used Mandarin to teach Chinese but didn't want to appear too left-leaning, while Cantonese was more politically neutral for the time.
• Dehumanizing Insult: In The Stinger of Episode 3, a student complains that not permitting students to speak during lessons deprives them of freedom and compares them to not allowing one's pet dog to bark. The student next to him then says, in complete Gratuitous English, "You are a dog."
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • In Episode 13, a teacher punishes three of his students to stand outside the classroom for "writing Chinese characters wrongly" (i.e. strokes that are basically too long or too short), and accuses the smartphone as wrong when they look up the words to prove him wrong. For the record, to the people who can't read Chinese, the students did nothing wrong (by "normal person" standards) and wrote the words in socially acceptable ways.
  • Episode 16 discusses one time where a school called the cops on their senior year students for… taking photographs on their last day of secondary school, because they allegedly feared for the students' safety. In the skit version, the cop dismissed this after learning about the situation and called it a waste of police resources to be called to handle such a trivial situation.
• Dress Code:
  • Episode 2 of the series examines several of the more conservative dress codes in local schools, including only permitting glasses with pure black frames, black hair (unless it was naturally non-black), and white undershirts (no black undershirts, no not wearing undershirts).
  • Episode 3 starts off by discussing how Casual Dress Day at many schools often forces students to adhere by certain dress codes, e.g. students not being allowed to wear the uniform assigned to the opposite sex, or not being allowed to wear the school uniforms of other schools — a student complains that "with dress codes be this strict, there might as well be no Casual Dress Day". Episode 4 follows up by citing several YouTube comments on how schools also ban wearing shorts, sleeveless shirts, sandals, and skirts shorter than knee-length on Casual Dress Day.
  • Episode 9 mentions how some schools didn't allow students to wear wrist-watches without asking for permission from the school (which is a lot stricter than most other schools).
  • In Episode 15, one of the rules on the "Top 10 Weird School Rules in Hong Kong, in the Eyes of the Taiwanese" list is that students aren't allowed to wear jackets/cardigans or vests over their summer uniforms. The students speculate it's to check if students have tattoos, which has two main issues:
    1. Some schools turn on their air-conditioning to the point it's freezing, so tough luck to those students;
    2. As the skit points out, students would just get their tattoos in places that were covered by their summer uniform and not on their exposed limbs.
• Driven to Suicide: Discussed in Episode 16, in that many suicides in Hong Kong are related to schools. The host, Tonie, wonders if this is normal or if there is something seriously wrong with Hong Kong's education system.
• Exact Words: The students often take advantage of the wording in their ridiculous school rules to bend them to their advantage, especially in the face of the more obstinate teachers. How well this goes tends to depend on the skit.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Just as the title suggests, the series covers weird rules in various schools across Hong Kong.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • In Episode 11, a YouTube comment cites that showing oneself as tired/bored during lessons, including yawning, was worthy of a demerit at some schools.
  • According to an Episode 19 skit, some schools ban students from bringing masks and umbrellas to class due to them being associated with the protest movement at the time, even when the student is feeling unwell or if it was raining earlier in the morning, and has the teachers confiscate them whenever they see them.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: The comments section of the videos act as one, with the host referencing strange school rules mentioned in the comments of previous episodes, and even in Episode 7, Na-mei on the Affirmative side of the debate whether Hong Kong's school rules are weird cites, "Of course Hong Kong's school rules are weird, if they weren't weird, then how would there be so many comments on each episode of 'Weird school rules in Hong Kong'?"
• Fridge Logic: In-universe. In Episode 10, the students speculate why their school prohibited students from bringing coloured drinks (including cola and herbal tea). The teacher cites that it was to prevent students from staining their white uniforms, but the students eventually counter that their school tuck shop sells coloured drinks and the school lunches have sauces, both of which can stain their uniforms just as easily.
• Gratuitous English: The first skit in Episode 4 mentions that some schools don't allow their students to speak Cantonese (most Hongkongers' native language) while wearing their school uniforms and only permit them to speak English, which results in this and Bilingual Dialogue.
  Male student: (in Cantonese) Hey, aren't you Yan-yan? I haven't seen you in so long!
  Yan-yan: (in English, pretentiously) Please. Speak. English.
  Male student: You're speaking Ing-guh-lan-shi^* It can translate to "English" in a Cantonese accent, or as the subtitles put it, "England shit" in distorted Cantonese for no reason.
  Yan-yan: (in English, pretentiously) I'm sorry. No Cantonese wearing school uniform.^note It's actually "No Cantonese while wearing school uniform", at the very least.
  Male student: (in Cantonese) Your school is so frustrating!
  (In the distance, a man slips over and falls down)
  Yan-yan: (laughing) Puk gaai! ^note Literally "fall onto the street", but is usually used more euphemistically as a curse word.
  Male student: (in an accusative tone, in Cantonese) Oh, you spoke Cantonese!
  Yan-yan: (in English) Uh… I just say, "Poor guy!" Is English! Not Cantonese ah!^note "Uh, I just said, 'Poor guy!' It's English, not Cantonese!"
• Heroic Bastard: It's revealed in Episode 13 that a sympathetic male student who jumped to the defense of a classmate (who was being told off by an unmarried teacher for dating) was the son of the teacher.
• Gray Rain of Depression: The third Episode 17 skit, which compared how strict the rules were between schools through a Misery Poker conversation between students of each school, took place while it was raining.
• High School: The skits are typically set in secondary school (7th to 12th grade) in Hong Kong, but this is never explicitly stated — the main hints towards this are the school-books which are used in skits^note They are typically junior secondary school books, i.e. 7th to 9th grade, but one skit uses senior secondary-level Chemistry textbooks, and the teenage-oriented issues discussed in the episodes (e.g. puberty and dating).
• Hypocrite:
  • In an Episode 2 skit, a prefect halts Na-mei in her path to record down her name because her hair was brown and not black. Na-mei then calls out the prefect for having grey hair, to which he claims is natural (with a parent's letter to "prove" it) — while the shorter part of his undercut was clearly black.
  • In an Episode 4 skit set in a Christian school, a teacher first tells a boy with sub-par academic results to return to school on Sunday for remedial classes (or risk having a truancy record) even though he has to go to church that day; then tells a non-Christian girl that she has to go to church that Sunday even though she's not even Christian, citing that non-Christian students shouldn't go to a Christian school. After that conversation, the girl lampshades this:
    "Huh?! Not allowing a Christian to go to church, but also forcing a non-Christian to go to church? What world are we living in?"
• Ironic Echo:
  • In Episode 1, one of the skits discusses how students being forbidden from using their phones even outside of school premises as long as they were wearing the school uniform could very well be a detrimental rule.
    (Dou-ding is using her mobile phone outside a shopping mall)
    Ms. Luk: Student Dou-ding!
    Dou-ding: (puts away her phone and gives a short bow) Ms. Luk?
    Ms. Luk: Did you know you cannot use your mobile phone outside of school premises while wearing your school uniform?
    Dou-ding: [Yes, I] know.
    Ms. Luk: Now I'm going to record down your name.
    Dou-ding: (bows) Yes, [ma'am].
    (A thief runs by and snatches Ms. Luk's bag out of her hand)
    Ms. Luk: What [just] happened? (Beat) Theft! Student Dou-ding, help me call the police, my mobile phone was in [the stolen bag]!
    Dou-ding: Huh? But didn't the school say that us students can't use our mobile phones outside of school premises while wearing our school uniform? Are you setting me up? (walks away)
  • In Episode 7, on the topic of schools banning the use of air-conditioning below 25 degrees Celsius weather, the girl on the Negative side of the debate tries to justify the rule in that it teaches students that "a calm heart keeps [you] cool" (a Chinese idiom, 心靜自然涼). Na-mei on the Affirmative side responds by moving to switch off the air-conditioner, citing this idiom as the reason for doing so.

K – Z

• Loony Laws: The school equivalent — the series discusses the strange rules set up by various schools across Hong Kong.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • In Episode 1, in the skit discussing a rule against wearing leather shoes to school, the student explains that his shoes were "made in [the Strong Country, i.e. China]" and therefore didn't contain real leather. We don't know if the teacher accepted this as an excuse, though.
  • In Episode 2, in the skit discussing a rule that only permits glasses with black frames, a student lends his 3D glasses to a schoolmate, Yan-yan (whose glasses frames violated the rules), because his 3D glasses had purely black frames and didn't violate the rules.
    Male student: What's going on?
    Yan-yan: Sir^* (The common address for a male teacher in Hong Kong) said we can't wear glasses that don't have black frames.
    Male student: So, Sir, we can only wear glasses with pure black frames?
    Teacher: (smugly) Of course — if they have pure black frames like mine, you can wear them.
    Male student: Yan-yan, you can wear this pair of mine. (takes out a pair of 3D glasses with pure black frames and hands them to Yan-yan)
    (Yan-yan takes the 3D glasses and superimposes them over her own glasses with black and brown frames, smiling)
    Teacher: Huh?! Even 3D glasses for watching movies?!
    Male student: Sir, how can you take back your words? These are glasses with black frames!
• Misery Poker: The Episode 17 skits tend to involve this:
  • One of the skits features a boy who really needs to go to the bathroom being handed two forms by a patrolling teacher and that he had to fill them out before going in (the boy didn't even have a pen to fill them out with). The forms in question asked him why he had to go to the bathroom, for how long he would have to go, and when he would return to the classroom. Then, a girl walks out of the bathrooms and tells him that the girls' forms were a lot worse, asking them if they were pooping or peeing or if they were menstruating, and if it's the latter, what day they were on and how much they were bleeding, as well as whether they brought their own pads.
  • Another skit features a girl complaining about how her school required the students' parents to check their children's WhatsApp every day to see if they ever went out with their classmates. A boy from another school then said that he had it worse as his school forced all the students to immediately go home after school was over and that anyone who didn't would be caught by the teachers, and this included staying at school after classes to study.^note The episode was released in June 2019, before the COVID-19 Pandemic. Fat Tom then complained that he had it worse than both of them even though he didn't have to endure what they had to endure… because he went to a Boarding School with regulations so strict he thought it was worse than being imprisoned.

• Mistaken for Terrorist: One of the strange rules featured in Episode 2 was that students weren't allowed to put their school-bags in the canteen without supervision because apparently the teachers were "afraid they were bombs placed down by terrorists".
• Modesty Shorts: Defied at at least one school in Hong Kong, apparently, as Episode 6 cites a YouTube comment on how a student had to have a parent's letter to wear them under their uniform. Episode 17 then has a female student recall her (female) teacher telling her to lift her skirt so she could check whether she was wearing Modesty Shorts or not, and explain to her male classmate the reason behind this rule was apparently because the school considered wearing them to be an "unrefined" and "crude/boorish" practice.
• Multi-Part Episode: Episodes 7 and 8 cover a debate on the notion "Hong Kong's school rules are very weird".
• Musical Episode: Parts of Episode 6 feature students singing about strange rules and/or why the rules were justified. Episode 8 also features a "Singing Battle" in the middle of the debate session on whether local school rules were weird or not.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Discussed and subverted in Episode 13. In a skit, a teacher tells off a girl for dating, and her classmates try to make fun of the teacher by saying that since she's already 40 and unmarried, it is already difficult to bear children at her age and this made her continued life a waste of society's resources and disrespect towards her parents (in accordance to traditional Chinese belief).
  Teacher: Being unmarried doesn't mean [one] can't have children!
  Male student: Whoa! I can't believe Teacher is this progressive! (starts clapping) Impressive, impressive, impressive–
  Teacher: (tousles the student's hair and drags him away by the ear) Well, you're my son, idiot boy, you'll pay for it tonight once we get home…
• My Nayme Is: The New Transfer Student introduced to the boys' school in Episode 3 is named 'Fian' according to the subtitles, rather than a more conventional spelling in the Anglosphere like 'Vienne' or 'Vienna'. This might have something to do with the local accent, though.
• Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom: In an Episode 1 skit, while explaining he has a Real Joke Name, Ng Kei-tak (whose name, 吳記德, sounds virtually the same as "[I] forgot" in Cantonese) makes it clear what Chinese characters his name consists of (the 'kei' in "memory" and the 'tak' in "moral character"), which gives a translation to his given name's meaning as well — "remember virtue".
• New Technology Is Evil: Discussed Trope. In an Episode 6 skit, the teacher announces a ban on bringing "expensive mobile phones" to school.
• New Transfer Student: An Episode 3 skit features a female student named 'Fian' being transferred to what used to be an all-boys' school.
• No Hugging, No Kissing:
  • Invoked by various secondary schools in Hong Kong, with rules explicitly banning dating and romantic relationships among students. The host says that this was an understandable rule, but would be very strange in certain types of schools.
    Unnamed student: So the school rules explicitly state we're not allowed to date or talk about romance.
    Fat Tom: How is this a strange rule?
    Unnamed student: But… we're a boys' school.
    (The two boys sitting in front of them caress each other's faces dramatically)
    Unnamed student: Are you kidding me?!
  • Later subverted in Episode 5 in the skit on banning food from McDonald's, where the Class Princess is seen going out with a boy from another school after class.
• No Name Given: Many of the student-characters in the skits do not have canonical names in the series. It's implied through the characters who do have names that they take on the names of their actors.
• No Periods, Period: Averted.
  • Episode 10 opens with a skit where a male teacher doesn't allow a female student to visit the bathroom in the middle of class because it was against the school rules to do so regardless of reasons. The girl then explains that she was on her period and the blood was staining her uniform already, and the male teacher quickly amends that if she had told him upfront that she was on her period, he would have let her visit the bathroom. The host, Na-mei, cites this as an outrageous instance.
  • In a Misery Poker sequence in Episode 19, a girl complains that the form that girls are required to fill out for visiting the bathroom asks them if they were going because they were menstruating, and if they were, what day they were on and how much they were bleeding, as well as whether they brought their own pads.
• One-Gender School: Episode 3's final skit is set in a boys' school, where two students discuss how strange it was to have a no-dating rule in place in such a setting. This is quickly subverted when a female New Transfer Student is introduced to the class.
• Perma-Shave: Invoked. Episode 11 mentions how some schools don't allow their male students to grow facial hair because it implies they aren't "neat and tidy". In the skit focusing on this, a student is shown to have stubble that he couldn't shave off because his razor broke that morning (and that not even he wanted this to happen), but the teacher said that it was "not an excuse" and told him to stay behind after school. However, when the Principal shows up with a mustache, the students protest against the in-universe Double Standard towards facial hair on men.
• Properly Paranoid: An Episode 5 skit cites how schools treating Accidental Perverts as indecent people is to prepare students for the outside world. It also cites that making students carry their Student ID cards around is also this, as citizens not carrying their ID cards around is illegal in the outside world — which is quickly followed up by a plain-clothes police officer checking the students for their ID cards, which ends with the student who forgot both his Student ID and citizen ID cards to get dragged to the police station.
• Real Joke Name: One of the skits in Episode 1 features a student named Ng Kei-tak (吳記德), whose name is pronounced virtually the same as "唔記得", lit. "can't remember" or "forgot" in Cantonese. This leads to a Who's on First? sequence.
• Red Armband of Leadership: In Episode 2, the student prefect with the grey undercut wears a red armband to signify his position.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • Episode 7, being centred around a debate whether Hong Kong's schools have strange rules, has the Affirmative side cite late 2016 news reports that Bethel High School in Yuen Long forced students to fill out a form whenever they needed to have a bathroom break in the middle of class, a policy which led to mass criticism. Episode 17 also has a skit detailing the perspective of students affected by these rules, such as how intrusive the forms were (in terms of information they asked for) and the Skewed Priorities of the school to waste time caring more about these trivial details than let their students just do their business.^note For sources (in Chinese) for the Bethel High School scandal, see an archived Apple Daily article here and a Ming Pao article here.
  • Episode 16 has a skit that discusses one time a school called the cops on their senior year students for… taking photographs on their last day of secondary school. For the record, the school in question was the girls-only St. Paul's Secondary School, and the incident in question occurred less than a month before the episode was released. The skit based on this, though, takes place in a co-ed school and adds more "ridiculous" elements to it like the supernatural.
  • Episodes 19 and 20 (released in September 2019) have a more political tone, being focused on the ongoing events on Hong Kong campuses during the protest movement, while Episode 21 discusses student life in the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Rule of Sexy: A defiance of the trope is discussed in Episode 15. In speculating why Taiwanese people found the "no wearing PE uniforms while entering and exiting the campus" rule weird, it's claimed that the Taiwanese PE uniforms were more likely to be short-sleeved shirts with long trousers while Hong Kong PE uniforms were more likely to be short-sleeved shirts with shorts, so the latter was more likely to make students look "sexy". So naturally, the schools banned it.
• Sailor Fuku: The host of Episode 21, Una, wears this.
• Satire: The point of the series is to satirize how ridiculous some of the rules of local schools are, and by extension, secondary school life in Hong Kong.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Defied. Episode 2 off-handedly mentions that some schools prohibited students from going out with their classmates.
• Self-Deprecation: Episode 19 has a skit where a prefect calls out a student for watching "Weird school rules in Hong Kong" because it's not a "healthy" programme for driving a wedge between students and the school… then it's revealed to be an allegory for the local protest movement and whether or not people should support the government and the police against the protesters.
• Shout-Out:
  • The boy on the Affirmative side of the debate shouts "Objection!" in Episode 7 to state his case.
  • In Episode 10, while discussing why students aren't allowed to hold hands with classmates of the same sex in school, they come to the conclusion that the school frowned upon same-gender relationships. During that sequence, local lesbian singer Denise Ho's song "Brazen" (明目張膽) is played over it.
  • Episode 14 explicitly discusses several school rules from the Long List of rules in the fictional Edinburgh College from Fight Back to School (in which Stephen Chow plays the lead character), including bans on loaning money to others, "illegal gatherings" (of three or more people, even for a chat), "visiting the bathroom for more than four minutes" (even in the case of constipation), etc.
  • In Episode 19, the human chain of students sing "Do You Hear the People Sing" as a Protest Song in favour of the local protest movement at the time, which is Truth in Television.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • In Episode 2, one of the skits examines a rule prohibiting glasses with frames that are not pure black in colour. A student with glasses of such frames, Yan-yan, tries to protest this by saying she can't see the blackboard without her glasses, but the teacher brushes it off, saying that she could go a day without seeing the blackboard. In other words, the teacher cares more about the rules than whether a student can learn effectively in the classroom, and in "normal school" circumstances, the teacher would let Yan-yan wear her non-authorized glasses for the rest of the school day at the very least.
  • In Episode 19, the teacher stops the students from forming a human chain — not because he didn't support the protest movement for human rights (the human chain was done in support of the movement), but because "boys and girls cannot be so intimate" as to hold hands, even in a protest for human rights. The students had to resort to holding tape or footballs in between them.
• Sins of Our Fathers: In an Episode 19 skit, a male student says that he feels unsafe after his teacher confiscated his umbrella. The teacher asks him (rhetorically) how he could feel unsafe after arriving on campus, only for students in the background to shout that the student was the son of Police Inspector Cheung and for them to rush him.^note The cops were deeply unpopular at the time due to their involvement in the protest movement, having a reputation for being corrupt and incompetent, if not doling out Police Brutality on protesters. The student then claims he suddenly fell ill and rushes out of school. The host, Tonie, then asks the viewers whether the children of police officers who "do wrong things" should be dragged into issues concerning their parents.
• The Smurfette Principle: In Episode 3, the two boys find that the New Transfer Student to their boys' school being female is "awesome". The teacher then reprimands them for "talking about romance" in class, which was against the school rules, and puts them in charge of cleaning the blackboard for a year as punishment.
• Special Guest: Episode 4 ends with clips of fellow YouTubers Billy Tang and Maggie Wong recalling some of the strange school rules in place when they were students.
• Stealth Insult: In the "Arresting Seniors for Taking Photos for Too Long" skit in Episode 16, the teacher claims to have called the cops because it was unsafe for the students to be out "so late". The male classmate, Ming Tai-tsz, then claims that they didn't have to worry about the safety of Melody, the female classmate, as perverts wouldn't be interested in her looks and build. It's the nonchalant way he delivers it that allows it to qualify for a Stealth Insult.
• Strict Parents Make Sneaky Kids: Discussed Trope, of the Teachers and Students variation. In Episode 13, a teacher tells off a girl for dating, saying that the school banned it because it can affect students' academic results (even though the girl had the best grades in the class). Several other students then jumped to the girl's defense, saying that among other things, banning dating would only make the students more rebellious.
• Sucky School: Pretty much the entire series' focus is on how ridiculous local schools' rules are, but Episode 17 takes the cake by comparing the conditions of a local, relatively elite secondary school (for the record, it's the one that called the cops on their students for taking pictures for too long) to those of a local women's prison, and concluded that parents were better off sending their daughters to jail than that school.^note The criteria compared are mealtime restrictions, dress code (tied), dealing with complaints, extra-curricular activities, equality, the presence/absence of "Reflection", whether Moving the Goalposts applies for the rules, whether it's allowed to take pictures at the entrance, and extra-layers policy when a Cold Weather Warning is issued. The episode itself is titled "比坐監懲教所更嚴格校規", or in English, approximately "School Rules Stricter Than Those of Prisons Run by the Correctional Services Department".
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Episode 16 has a skit where a student, Magic Boy, considers jumping down from a building in response to (apparently) increasingly strict or otherwise WTF-inducing school rules, and two of his classmates try to talk him down. In response to being called an idiot, one of Magic Boy's classmates ends up pushing him off the building.
• Top Ten List: Episode 15 is titled (in Chinese) "Top 10 Weird School Rules in Hong Kong, in the Eyes of the Taiwanese".
• Values Dissonance: Discussed in-universe.
  • At the start of Episode 6: According to Fei-lung (a fellow member of production), while he was studying in Canada, students didn't have to wear school uniforms and could kiss in the hallways, and even the principal encouraged students to date and get to know people of the opposite sex. The host, Na-mei remarks that this is just hard luck for the audience in Hong Kong.
  • Episode 15 as a whole discusses a Top Ten List of "Weird School Rules in Hong Kong, in the Eyes of the Taiwanese". Granted, 4 of the rules were already covered or at least mentioned in the series, but the dissonance stands.
• Video Call Fail: Episode 21 covers many of the hijinks occurring in schools under the COVID-19 pandemic, one of them being teachers giving lectures during online classes with their microphones accidentally muted. In one of the skits, two of the students remark through the subtitles that it wasn't the first time this has happened, and that they should just let the teacher talk and not let him know he was muted.
  Teacher: (after lecturing about the geographical position of Hong Kong) Students, I just said that Hong Kong is located on the north shore of what?
  (Beat)
  Teacher: Located on the north shore of what?
  (Beat)
  Teacher: No one's answering? (in English) Anybody home? Anybody home? Huh?
  (The teacher's phone makes a notification sound)
  Teacher: Ey, my phone's ringing?
  WhatsApp message: 阿Sir你一直無開MIC^* "Sir, you never turned on [your] microphone"
  Teacher: Are you kidding me?! Then why didn't you tell me just now?
  (Beat)
  Teacher: (muttering to himself) Ding lei go faai ah, no one's responding.
  Random student: (in the subtitles) I've finished copying the entire horse-racing form and the teacher still hasn't turned on [his] mic
• Who's on First?: In Episode 1, one of the rules deemed "weird" is that students of a school must bring their wallets to class or they'll have their names recorded down. Cue this conversation:
  Teacher: (stopping a random student in his tracks) Ay, this student [here], I need to check if you've brought your wallet [to school] or not.
  Student: (fumbles around his pockets) [I] forgot [to].
  Teacher: You forgot?! Then [I] need to record down your name, what's your name?
  Student: "M̀h gei dāk".^* "[I] forgot"
  Teacher: [You] can't even remember your name?! Would you believe me if [I said] I'll give you a major demerit [for this]?
  Student: Sir, my name really is 'Ngh Gei-dāk — the 'Ng' in 'Daniel Wu'^note Daniel Wu's Chinese name is 吳彥祖, whose name in Cantonese is Ng Yin-cho, the "Kei" in "memory" (記憶), the "tak" in "moral character" (品德).
  • For context, the student's name, Ng Kei-tak (吳記德), is pronounced virtually the same as "唔記得", lit. "can't remember" or "forgot" in Cantonese. For an English speaker's equivalent, the student would be named something along the lines of "Ivor Gott", with 'Ivor' being pronounced "EYE-vor".

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