On a good night Shanghai 13-year-old Li Wenwei finishes his homework by 10.45. That's more than three of hours additional maths, physics, Chinese and English for the grade 8 student.
This punishing homework regime runs four nights a week and comes after a school day which starts at 7.30am and finishes at 5.30pm.
Friday is notionally an easier night, comprising a rushed hamburger dinner followed by three hours of maths tutoring at a "cram school", then 11 stops on the subway home.
That's a 65-hour week for the teenager who attends a local private school. And this is before taking into account his weekend program.
On Saturday there's time for a sleep-in, basketball practice and an hour of computer games, but at least six hours of homework is also required.
By Sunday it's back to the cram school for four hours of English and physics, followed by two hours of homework later in the evening.
In total it means Li is putting in a 77-hour week, the type of schedule which would make a corporate lawyer or investment banker blush.
Li's parents and teachers don't get off lightly either.
At 7.30 on the most recent Tuesday evening, his physics teacher sent out answers, via the class WeChat group, to the four pages of problems he'd sent home that day.
Two hours earlier the night's homework list was sent to the group.
Ensuring compliance
It ran to four A4 pages of maths problems, the aforementioned physics, translating an ancient Chinese verse from traditional to simplified characters, then reading an English article 10 times.
To ensure compliance with this last task, parents were asked to sign that their child had read the article the required amount of times.
At 11.18 on that Tuesday night, one parent messaged the group saying her daughter had just finished the homework and inquired how others were going.
"We have not finished yet," said another parent from the class of 41 students.
Li's punishing school, homework and tutoring schedule is all part of an effort to ensure the teenager goes to a senior high school, rather than a vocation training college for his last three years of secondary education.
This is not guaranteed as only 60 per cent of Shanghai students gain entry into this top tier, which in turn allows them to sit the country's famously tough university entrance exam, known as the Gaokao.
The ultimate goal, like most parts of the world, is attendance at a top university followed by a well-paying white-collar job.
But in a country where 7.5 million students left university last year, the average Shanghai graduate can expect a salary of just 5000 yuan ($1000) a month.
