Nostalgia is quite prevalent among young Chinese nowadays. But if they could slip into a time machine and choose the stage of life they'd like to go back to, I'd bet that the least popular destination would be high school. As I remember it, the long march toward the ruthless national college entrance examination was a nightmare, only exceeded in its misery by the miscellaneous restrictions placed on us by our teachers in their quixotic aim to stifle each and every possible bud of so-called "puppy love."

Recently, the principal of the Luocheng High School in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region announced a "safe distance" rule to preclude the possibility of such couplings. Quoting an "expert" in male-female relations, he stipulated that boys and girls keep at least 44 centimeters from each other - at all times. My jaw dropped when I read the news, in utter disbelief that such rules are still haunting the youth of our country, even three decades after the beginning of our opening-up and reform.

I brought up this anecdote recently with a high-school classmate of mine, in Beijing for a business trip; during our reunion we talked of our high-school life a decade ago - in particular, those absurd restrictions on puppy love.

"Let me give you a clear-cut definition of a relationship today," our female principal had blurted at us through a loudspeaker at one point during those dark days. "From now on, if we see a boy and girl walking together alone, we'll call it a relationship, and the teachers are obliged to punish them!"

A decade later, my classmate and I could still recite her lines word by word. What a powerful stamp she left on us!

At that time a teacher in my neighboring class was also famous for his "iron hand" in guarding against puppy love, dividing the classroom into two parts, separated by the middle crossbeam. All the boys were forced to sit in the latter half and could never walk into the front, and vice versa.

One day it was time for the girls to work on the blackboard at the back of the classroom. So, in accordance with the teacher's instructions, all the girls in that class stood in a queue and walked out of the front door, marched through the corridor and entered the back door one-by-one. The boys were banned from looking back throughout the entire process. The teacher was said to be very proud of his contact-proof method.

After entering college, I found most of my classmates had undergone similar experiences, even those from more developed areas. Forbidding puppy love is an instinctive logic of many Chinese teachers, supported wholeheartedly by parents. The emergence of puppy love-related bans has a macro-level societal backdrop, as education in sex and love is basically nonexistent in Chinese schools.

The biggest negative impact of those bans is the low EQ of more than a few Chinese youth. I have a friend who is a PhD candidate and has never had a single relationship. In middle school, this friend's teachers were her puppy-love watchdogs. Even in college, she trembled under her parents' restrictions against intermingling with the opposite sex, terrified of their wrath. Such stiff views have influenced my friend, and as a result she's never learned how to get along with a man - and this sorry state is hardly a rarity on Chinese campuses.

What teachers and parents need to do is to guide teenagers' views of relationships and romance, thus helping them build a healthier psychology toward love. Stipulating a "safe distance" and practicing "segregation" barely helps in this respect. Social research indicates that most puppy love ends hastily. Nevertheless, the subtle impacts of such relationships can last a lifetime.

"If I have a daughter, I will encourage her to experience puppy love," my high-school classmate asserted. "Such experiences will make her smarter in dealing with relationships as she grows up and faces the reality of life."

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. chenchenchen@ globaltimes.com. cn