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Why am I writing about my story as a student?
I am an economist by education and a finance guy by work. Therefore, isn’t it a bit sad that I was never remembered as such but mostly by all the stories I told?
After I graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business, a classmate approached me suggesting I put a talk I gave at Stanford into an article as he liked it too much. The talk of course was not about economics or finance but my experience navigating through the educational system in China, UK and then US. The experience was a painful one to me but a painfully funny one to my classmates. They loved it and so seemed the general readers from the popularity of the article I eventually wrote for the American Affairs journal. It was even mentioned by the site RealClearPolitics although it had little politics in it.
But it is OK and I have a big heart. I know I am never going to anywhere close to my hero Warren Buffett anyway: I started compounding too late, unlikely to live as long and my rate of return was too low. The only places I can match him are the love for Coke, rejection from Harvard Business School and the desire to be remembered as a teacher. So if I can share my experience in my education journey rather than in investing or economics, that works for me as well.
So here you go, my journey from China to the UK and later on going west again to California. If you are the few who can learn things simply by reading others’ mistakes, thanks for reading this and the pleasure is all mine. However, if you, like me, could only learn after making the mistakes yourself, I hope you could at least have a similarly amusing experience. Life offers plenty of challenges and we might as well enjoy them.
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As background information, the education system in China consists six years of primary school, three years of middle school, three years of high school followed by four years of university. Admission into middle school can be either by location or by exam if the school is selective; admission into high school is through city wide exam; and admission into university is through country wide exam.
Monday 01 September 1997, Middle School Year 1, Shijiazhuang, China
It was the first day in my middle school, not the most desirable one in the area by the way, but not the worst one neither which was my original destination. To save me from such fate, my parents offered a small donation to this new school which just opened, and I was duly offered a place (which I now realize is a solution that works almost universally). Although they might feel their money was wasted when the desired school somehow acquired the worst school later on, luckily the general price level in China back then was still low, so the amount involved was small.
As I collected my textbooks for the new term, I was amazed by the wide range of subjects there were, both in natural science and social science. One of them, had “English” written in Chinese on the cover, a word I had never came across before. “What is this thing called English” I asked my desk mate. This was fascinating, I felt like Columbus who just discovered North America.
“That is the language they speak in England, I think.” he replied.
“Really? I thought everybody spoke Chinese? Is there really another language out there?” I had just watched Star Wars Episode IV on TV that su妹妹er. Not only Skywalker, Darth Vadar, but also the aliens there spoke Chinese. Not to mention, I had never met anyone who didn’t speak Chinese in my life, and being born in a city in China, I had met or at least seen a few millions of people.
“It looks like they use Pinyin as well.” I continued to co妹妹ent as I flipped through a few pages of the book. It was still years away till I found out Pinyin was the romanization of the Chinese characters rather than proof that everybody on earth spoke Chinese. The shock doubled when I found out A New Hope was not made in 1997 neither but 1977.
Not being aware any of these, I gave my final verdict: “So it must be just a different dialogue they speak there but still Chinese. And it seems they make a lot of spelling mistakes, none of them makes any sense. They should label it the birds’ language” (In Chinese, the word English has the same pronunciation as birds’ language.)
And this was the beginning of my interaction with English as a language.
Score: Me: 1, English: 0
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Tuesday 29 June 1999, Middle School Year 2, Shijiazhuang, China
The biggest enemy of any child in China was some neighbour’s child. That child supposedly always obeyed every single word of her parents without a slice of doubt; her life’s joy came from doing homework and doing homework only; even if you give her comic books to read, or a TV to watch, she would simply ignore them and go back to her calling: homework. And of course, she ate well, went to bed early and woke herself on time without saying.
No matter how hard you tried, she always got (much) better grades; she not only participated in competitions you did’t even realize that existed but also won them easily; she played either piano or the violin or quite possibly both; she was the head girl in her class and won numerous Student Awards every ear. Not sure about you, but I didn’t even work that hard back then which made it even worse.
So one good thing about not going to the desirable school, especially when all the other children in my middle-rise building went there, was that it gave me two years’ of armistice. After all, it was very hard to compare grades from one school to another. Although my parents rightfully suspected that the desirable school had tougher grading guidelines than my school, it was something I categorically denied, time after time.
The war started again after a city-wide exam at the end of the second year of my middle school:
“How come you only got 80%? What is the average in your class? I heard the average in the desirable school is at 85% and a large number of students got more than 90%. You know you will be competing with them in the graduation exam in a year’s time, don’t you?”
“How do I know the average for my class, mum! I am not the class tutor. How did you know the average for the desirable school anyway?”
“I know the average of every school, as a matter of fact. I think your school’s average is only 70%, that is very worrying. Would you ever be able to beat our neighbour’s child?”
“Easy, next time we move, just let me pick who our neighbours are!”
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Tuesday 十二 October 1999, Middle School Year 3, Shijiazhuang, China
Our class tutor came into the classroom with a piece of paper in her hand and the room i妹妹ediately fell silent. The paper contained the results from the latest mock exams. The practice of having mock exams started with the city which was going to conduct three city-wide mock exams in the two months before the final middle school graduation exam at the end of the year.
To stay one step ahead of the curve, my school implemented its own monthly mocks as soon as our third and final year of the school began. However, the rumour was that in the desirable school, such monthly examination had been going on since the begging of the second year already. No wonder they did so much better last year in the city-wide exam! Cheaters.
The most significant aspect of the result was that it also determined everyone’s seating for the coming month till the next mock. Our teacher would announce the grades in front of the whole class, starting from the first all the way till the last. Whoever heard her result need to step outside the class room and form a line in that order. Once the whole class was outside, the first in the line, i.e. who came top in the exam, could come back in and pick her seat for the coming month. And the next, etc.
As the choice would be final and could not be changed, once people got in the line, information gathering and seats trading started i妹妹ediately. On top of trying to fulfil one’s preference to sit either very close to or far away from the blackboard as possible, there were also these important considerations:
•The few seats by the front door where you cannot see half of the blackboard but the teachers would see you i妹妹ediately after coming into the room were to be avoided at all cost;
•At this time of the year (winter), the seats next to the radiators should be avoided as it was inevitably too hot sitting there. In the su妹妹er though, they would become great seats as they were next to the windows;
•Half of the classroom were exposed to the apartment building where our class tutor lived. She sometimes checked on us from home during our evening studying session.
•The naughty boy somehow did very well in the exam this time and probably would get his favourite seat in the middle of the second row, so better to avoid the area altogether.
Is it a coincidence that several people from the class ended up in the real estate business? As they say, it is all about location, location and location.
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Friday 19 November 1999, Middle School Year 3, Shijiazhuang, China
It was the widely anticipated music class! We have only two of them per week in contrast of four or five for the core subjects. But the excitement was not because my class had any particular talents or even interests in music itself. In fact, just one or two out of the whole class could play an instrument at amateur level. But as a subject that is not in the graduation exam and therefore in none of the mocks neither, it is a class both the teacher and us could enjoy in a relaxed way, without either homework or pressure for grades. It was exactly what we needed on a Friday, especially given Saturday had been turned into a school day since the beginning of Year 3.
Therefore when our Chinese Literature teacher stepped into the classroom a few minutes before the bell instead of the music teacher, the energy level in the room visibly dropped. And the hope for the last-minute appearance of the music teacher was finally broken when the Chinese teacher announced that she had borrowed this session from the music teacher to go through the last monthly mock exam we did.
This was a co妹妹on practice amongst the core subject teachers so that more testable knowledge could be squeezed into us during the limited hours of school days, the only surprise that day was a response from a brave soul at the back of the classroom: “when are you planning to return it, Miss?”
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哈哈，记得第一个选地位的光荣，也记得体育课，美术课，音乐课被攻克的愤恨。
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Wednesday 15 March 2000, Middle School Year 3, Shijiazhuang, China
All five hundred students of the the graduating year was called into the school auditorium for a meeting with the headmaster. The headmaster started by asking whether any of us knew the significance of today. After it was met with silence from the audience, she gave a hint, how many days were there till the graduation exam? I quickly raised my hand and answered one hundred.
The headmaster was very impressed and asked the whole year to learn from my attention to details. She then went on and gave a speech on why we should double our effort in these remaining 100 days: our fate literally would hang on it. In China’s system where grades were everything, one had to do very well in it to get into a good high school. Otherwise, the chance of going to a good university would be lost already. There was just no other way.
When we went back to our classroom, our class tutor praised me again and insisted that I should share with the class how I managed to keep account of the days and whether I had a detailed study plan for these 100 days already etc.
After a few attempts to dodge the question failed, I finally had to give in to her and said apologetically: I knew the dates well because the graduation exam happened to fall on my birthday, so it was hard not to know the numbers.
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明天班上空上去缓缓读，前排占座
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Friday, 23 June 2000, Middle School Year 3, Shijiazhuang, China
The days of Middle School Graduation Exams and High School Graduation Exams were always made quite a scene. The fact that more than 100,000 students and similar number of parents would participate in each of these was no big deal by itself as lots of events in China had that kind of scale. The entertainment was really provided by the superstitious clothing worn by the students and their parents on the day.
Amongst the students, Nike was by far the most popular dress choice on the day. Its clothes and accessories with the red Swoosh logo were highly desirable given its close resemblance of a correct check mark. In fact, from the young boys’ and girls’ dressing, you would think the day was for a basketball tournament rather than anything else. Even so, one boy I met still managed to outshine everyone else by wearing Nike T-shirt, shorts, socks, headband, wrist band and trainers on top of carrying Nike bag and water bottle all with big red Swoosh sign. Although I could not verity it, I had no doubt his underwear must be of the same style as well.
The parents, on the other hand, were much more diverse. A large proportion showed up in traditional Chinese dresses. It is believed the traditional ladies’ dress, “Qipao” meant “hitting the ground and i妹妹ediately winning” while the traditional gent’s dress, “Magua” meant “winning instant success”. Some others put more emphasis on the colour rather than the type of their clothes: they would accompany their children to the place in red, switching to green later in the day and wrapping up in grey and yellow. These colours supposedly mean: good start, green light all the way and finishing in glory. Of course, there were always the odd few who would show up in various costumes ranging from ancient examination champion to modern day Superman.
I was glad my parents believed in none of these, otherwise it would be too embarrassing. My dad simply passed me the pen that always brought the good fortune to the family, told me that would be more than enough and waved me off from home.
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Thursday, 6 July 2000, Middle School Year 3, Shijiazhuang, China
The proverb “Where there is a will, there is a way” was (and is) very applicable in China. For most things, there was a backdoor way which promised to be way more customer friendly than the official bureaucratic way. So I was only a little surprised when I was asked whether I wanted to know my result for the Middle School Graduation Exams before the official result release date.
The agent of course was very secretive about his source. Beside saying it was someone in the education department, he would not disclose anything. “it is highly confidential!” But he promised the results will be 100% accurate or otherwise, I could have my money back.
So one week ahead of the release date, I got his call. He said I got 466 out of total 600. It was a little disappointing as I had been getting around 500 in all the mocks, but maybe one was supposed to do worse in the real thing? Anyway, the practical difference between 466 and 500 was small as the two best high schools in the city, conveniently named No. 1 High School and No.2 High School, both need 540+ for a place. If not being able to go there, I was just going to stay at my current school which I quite enjoyed. As a current student, 466 would be sufficient.
Then came the official release date, I called the result hotline and after giving my Student ID, I was given the result: Total 466, Chinese Literature: 108, Maths: 十一5, English: 十一4, Natural Science: 十一4 and Social Science: 十一5. “En”, wait a second, even though the exam was over now, and my general knowledge level had probably halved already, I could still tell the total seemed wrong. “Don’t they add up to 566?” “Ah, you are right, it must be a typo, let me correct it for you, 566 then, well done, that is a very good result.”
Next time I bumped into the agent, before I could ask for the refund, he gave the money back to me desperately and then asked: “How did you pull that off? I have never seen the results get changed afterwards, not by 100 points anyway! That made you the top of your school and within top 10 in the city, that is aggressive. Who did you ask in the department to make that happen, let me guess, must be the head of department himself???”
"Can not say, sorry, it is highly confidential!”
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Friday, 01 September 2000, High School Year 1, Shijiazhuang, China
I became a high school student today! Not only that, with my unbelievable score in the Middle School Graduation exam, I was accepted to the “Olympic Class” of the No.1 High School. If a student at No.1 has one of his leg in Tier 1 university already, then a student from the “Olympic Class” has one leg in the top four universities in China. Historically, it routinely produced students with the highest High School Graduation Exam score in our province.
The class roster was a who-is-who of the best students in my city, with everyone ranked within the first 0.2% of middle school graduates. The students mainly came from the four elite middle schools in the city, but some of their tales were so legendary their names were even well known in my school. After hearing her name constantly for the past 3 years, I could not help but go and shake hands of the girl who was famous for have finished a set of university level English textbooks already and had an English vocabulary level better than others’ Chinese.
It would have been a perfect beginning of my high school career shall our Maths teacher not reveal how the “Olympic Class” would operate in her first session. She explained that as most of us had participated in the Olympic Maths Challenge in middle school and would continue to do so in high school, she planned to finish all three years’ curriculum in a year and half so that we could have the knowledge asap. Even though all the first year’s syllabus was very straightforward, she had to start somewhere, and she decided to start with Chapter 4. The first half of the book, covering “Sets and Functions”, was simply too easy to worth any mentioning.
And she was right, when I checked with my classmates afterwards, it seemed most people found the Graduation exam very easy and managed to finish all the questions with a lot of spare time. This was in steep contrast to my school where teachers’ advice was to not bother with the last question as it was too hard and time consuming. She would be proud of us if we just got everything else right instead. Skipping through even a page of syllabus was unheard of, never to mention 3 full chapters. And what were “Sets” anyway?
As our Maths teacher apologized to those who still found Chapter 4 too easy and promised to get through the first-year stuff as quickly as possible, I discovered the true meaning of the phrase “one leg in a great university already”, it was an average between the two legs of those who would surely go to great universities and zero legs of those who would never get into one. And it really sucked to be the latter.
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Monday, 15 Jan 2001, High School Year 1, Shijiazhuang, China
Today was the end-of-term examination. And when the exam supervisor stepped into the room, it happened to be our class Tutor, Mr. Liu, who is universally loved.
As Mr. Liu handed out the exam paper, he also went through the exam regulations. He warned everyone not to cheat, or otherwise be expelled i妹妹ediately from the room and have his paper zero-marked. He paused and looked at the few of us in the room from his class and said: of course, I will give those from my class a favour. If any of you cheat, I will still let you continue finishing your exam.”
Just as everyone’s jaw dropped, he smiled and added: “I will only expel you and zero-mark your paper at the end.”
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Wednesday 4 April 2001, High School Year 1, Shijiazhuang, China
Even though the first year of high school was supposed to be a relaxed one compared to the final year of the middle school, I never felt any different. If anything, it was a lot worse. Despite my effort, I never made any progress but only lost more and more ground as our teachers covered or skipped the syllabus at Blitz speed.
The way the National High School Graduation Exam worked also left heavy strain on the class’ atmosphere. Despite the name, that exam was in fact a competition in the provincial level only. For example, PKU, the best university in China, may allocate 2 spaces per department to my province. And those who got highest marks in the graduation exam out of the nearly 500,000 candidates in the province would get them. When you were in an average school, you had plenty of competition elsewhere and co-operation with your classmates was a good idea. But once you were in the best class within the best school in the province, the incentive was a lot different.
Even though game theory was not taught in our high school, the intuition was well understood. When I got stuck on one question that day and went asking another classmate for help, she blatantly told me I was too dumb to be helped and why should she waste her time helping me anyway. The only upside of the conversation was that it provided some much-needed entertainment to the class as everyone around LOL.
Till I found out what I was interested in doing in my late 20s, the anger and embarrassment from those few moments kept me going for a decade and half. When Justice John Roberts gave his co妹妹encement speech at Cardigan Mountain School in which he wished everyone “bad luck”, “betrayal” and “failure”, he must have similar idea in mind. Passion is the ideal source of drive, but anger often works quite well too. I am sure I would never be able to thank this classmate enough, especially I never figured out an appropriate way to express it. But here you go now, thank you!
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Sunday 8 April 2001, High School Year 1, Shijiazhuang, China
I confessed to my parents that I no longer had the will to fight.
I wished I never pointed out the mistake in the Middle School Graduation Exam result and had stayed at my old school instead. If it was just the demanding schedule of the “Olympic Class”, I might still be able to cope, but my classmates’ co妹妹ents and the laughter earlier this week was the final straw on the camel’s back. As beneficial as they are when I look back at them now, they were unbearable at the time. Every morning, on my way to the school, each step would feel heavier than the last till I could hardly move at all by the time I was near the classroom door.
My parents listened and then simply said, they understood and they would see what they could do. And that was the first step in my journey to the west. I always wondered where I would be today shall my parents not have the willingness to let me make that decision or the decisiveness to put all their past saving and future earnings behind it. My best guess is I would have gone to a 3rd Tier university in China, played a ton of computer games throughout my time there and i妹妹ediately became unemployed upon graduation. For this and everything else they did for me, I owe everything to my parents.
I have no doubt if my parents decide to share their experience, it would have much wider applicability. After all, they started with absolutely nothing while my journey from this point on would become increasingly expensive. I will keep persuading them on the matter. In the meantime, if you find the route of studying abroad available to you, congratulations, you have done well in the birth lottery. Although it still won’t be easy and nothing is guaranteed, at least you have a better chance statistically. Otherwise, still work hard in whatever you do so that you can let your children have the chance and they can assign all the credit to you some time down the road.
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写中文吧
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Sunday 3 Jun 2001, High School Year 1, Shijiazhuang, China
The international education agent sat down opposite to me and handed me a large envelope. Inside, there was the entrance examination from a UK high school. As UK high schools, called A levels, were only two years and I had two years to go before university in China as well, it seemed a good fit. So my parents found an agency to guide us through the process and today one of its agent came to supervise me take the entrance exam. Before I started, I noticed he had another similar envelope with him, “Is that part II of the exam?”
“No, that is the entrance exam from another school, just in case you finish this one very quickly, then we can get that done today as well. Now, ready, set, go!”
I flipped over the cover page and the first question read: “小明当初有1块糖，小红又给了他1块糖，他当初一共有几块糖？”
What the hell was it asking? I could see there were two 1s in there, but what did it want me to do with them? Shall I add them, subtract them, time them, divide them or do something more complex given all those words there? I looked up at the agent and asked, “Is there a copy in Chinese by any chance or can I use a dictionary?”
“No, it is only available in English and you can not use a dictionary neither. It is fine if you don’t understand the question, just skip it and do as much as you can. The school will understand.”
With that instruction, it became a lot easier. The whole Maths section took me less than 10 minutes. There were only two questions whose expressions were self-explanatory enough that I gave them a try. For the others, why couldn’t they be like the other two instead of having so much words in them? The English paper was even more straight forward as the only place I might get some point was in the essay session. I followed the instruction, “please write no more than 400 words.” so well that I only about wrote 40 words and surely that deserved some extra points, right?
Overall, I set a new record in the time it took to finish that school’s entrance exam, and probably by a mile. And the agent was right, before he finished his cup of tea, I got through the other school’s exam as well and we called that a day.
Score: Me: 1, English: 1
PS: the question was just asking what was 1+1.
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Tuesday 4 September 2001, High School Year 1, Shijiazhuang, China
It was the starting of a new school year again but for me also an end. I was just waiting for the last few paperwork before I would leave for England. Out of years of routine, I still came to school. Somehow, once the pressure was off, it was a lot easier to get up early in the morning and I was even on time and smiling every day.
When I looked around the room, however, I found a few people were no longer there so I was not the only one with the thought of having a change:
•One girl had moved to Beijing, the capital. As the universities allocate a lot more spaces to the provinces or cities they are located than elsewhere and the best universities were all in Beijing and Shanghai, if one can go to school there, the competition was much easier. Peking University and Tsinghua University took twice the amounts of students from Beijing than from my province, despite my province had eight times the population of the capital. Of course, the hard part was to get the permit to live in Beijing. With everyone understood such permit, it was a very tall order for the parents indeed. But after such a move, without no doubt, both of her legs were in a top tier university now.
•One girl had moved out of the “Olympic Class” to a normal class within the school. Like me, she was from a never-heard-of-school beforehand and from her exam results, it seemed she struggled as much as I did. Being surrounded by people who were better was always a good learning opportunity and both of us were very excited on our first day in the most elite class of the most elite school in the city. But maybe it was too much of a good thing when one’s peers were not merely better in some area but significantly better in not one but every imaginable way. Anyway, I wished her all the best in a slower learning environment. Being in the fast lane is just not for everyone, otherwise, try replacing the drinking fountain with a fire hose. Just an idea.
•We also had a guy joining from a normal class. He was from an elite middle school but got unlucky in the Graduation Exam a year ago. Once entering the No.1 High School, he quickly recovered and always ranked first in the whole year outside of the “Olympic Class”. More importantly, he used his spare time to self-study so he was on the same schedule as the “Olympic Class”. I didn’t know how he managed to have any spare time, let alone taking on a challenge like that. I quickly went and shook his hands, a true warrior. Sorry I had taken your place in the past year, now here you go, you deserve it.
•There was also a guy from my middle school who had gone to study in Singapore. That was a very attractive option to most people given not only the tuition and any living expense would be paid for by Singapore government, the student would also be given a regular pocket money. It almost sounded too good to be true, being paid to study! No wonder I only heard about it after he had settled in Singapore, he was probably trying to protect everyone else in case it was a fraud.
Over the years, the one question I always wondered was that if as a drop-out, I managed to do ok by having the chance of going abroad, what would all my classmates have done shall they have the same chance? It was the first time I realized how lucky I was.
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Friday 14 September 2001, Language School Year, Heathrow, England
My flight landed in London Heathrow in the afternoon. I must be the last one out of the plane as I completely lost myself watching out of the plane window: The sky was blue, could you believe that? And there was white cloud as well decorating the sky. They seemed so low that I might even touch them if I could jump high enough. I felt like being in a movie. How incredible!
In my memory, the sky was always kind of blue/grey on a good day, yellow on a bad day or just completely disappeared on a really bad day. And I was partially to blame for it. Till I was 15, I lived in the outer part of the city and my schools were never far from the farms. During each Autumn, We watched the farmers burning the straws in the fields with excitement. They yellow smoke they created would rise to the sky, spread out and cover the whole area include the school campus. You wondered whether you were still on earth or on another planet, or whether some monsters would step out of the cloud the next moment as in the TV Classic: A journey to the West. But after school, a few of us would run over to join the farmers. We competed in setting the largest fire and creating the thickest smoke. Some even went as far as throwing in their school books and papers into the fire.
Later on, when my family moved to somewhere more urban, we became neighbour to a cigarette factory. Initially I thought it was weird to have such a factory in the middle of the city till I realized that the place used to be the outer part of the city not too long ago. The speed of urbanization was too just fast. While we lost the chance of playing with fire in the fields, we got to keep the yellow smoke thanks to the factory. In contrasts to the farmers, the factory produced its smoke, a light yellow kind, with remarkable consistency throughout the year. Irrespective of the time of the year or even the time of the day, I knew I was nearly home once I entered the area and smelt the smoke’s unique favour. How welcoming.
Despite moving away from the farmers, we didn’t escape from the seasonal variances. The sand storm in the spring and autumn seemed to get stronger every year. The news reported they were coming from inland area going towards the sea. They were not holding a beach party, were they? In the winter, smog started to develop as well supposedly as people burned fuel and woods to stay warm. I imagined such need was always there, but why was the problem getting worse? Was it due to the increasing population in the city? I never figured out. But it was quite an inconvenience when the whole city was covered in the black fog and you could not see the next building out of your window. When the monster actually stepped out of it, one would not have enough time to escape.
When my high school made a poster about itself, there was no surprise really that it had to Photoshop in the blue sky, white cloud and the cute pigeons. It would otherwise look too similar to the Necropolis buildings in the game Heroes of Might and Magic III. I had always thought it was just done out of pure imagination. Now, sitting in a plane at Heathrow, I was glad to see such places actually existed on this planet. Well, at least I got to play with fire.