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In China In China: General | School & employment | Road abroad
General.
What happened in my life is far beyond anyone in my early years could
ever imagine. My only explanation is that the God did something unusual to
me. The three factors that greatly helped me are: Luck, Strategy and
Self-Improvement. Family. I was born in Fengyang, Anhui province, China. I always believe that I came up from the lowest level of the world. China was one of the poorest countries in the world, Fengyang was one of the poorest areas in China, and my family had the lowest social status in the community. Only because my family owned several thousand mu (1 mu = 0.165 acres) of farmland before the China Communist Party (CCP) ruled China, did my father belong to one of the "Four Kinds of Bad People"; he was a mere 17 year-old as CCP came to power in China. I am the fifth of the six children in such a family. My time came after China reinstated the Examination System. My two elder brothers didn't enter the college, because their school years were before the re-instatement of the Examination System for education in China. My first brother later became a known local figure because of his ability. Though he only finished his junior high school, he was sent out for a training paid by the local government, and the local government recognizes his education status as "Bachelor degree". He was appointed as the CEO of a local government's company. My second brother is the only one among us who finished five-year fundamental school in four years. If China hadn't had the policy change, I would have had only one life option: to be a farmer after junior high school, like my elder brothers.In China: General | School & employment | Road abroad
School and employment.
I maintained a record to be the No. 1
for scores in all subjects throughout
the fundamental and Junior high
school, except only one occasion, as I helped my family business and so
my score dropped to the second; and I quickly came back to study and
I reclaimed the No. 1 position. To be mentioned is that before the
examination system was reinstated in 1977, good score didn't have any
value. I was popular in my home town in the late half of the junior
high school because several teachers were very social and also because
their favorite topics were their genius student who usually reach 100%
in exam, rarely 99%. Shortly before my graduation, the teachers
convinced my parents and me, that I should give up the chance of a technician school
so I should attend senior
high school to pursue university. The
local people were surprised. Everyone believed I had a good chance to
enter a technician school, so to leave the poor rural area and to enter
the city. In
China, God creates people not equal!
Life in the village is very difficult and
is much better in the city (this is caused by the CCP's policy). Who knows what would happen in several years
after the senior high school! Tens of millions of young talents
graduated since China abolished its examination system 10 years before, were
fighting for the limited seats in a limited number of universities.
Though my initial decision was to pursue a technician school, I
eventually followed the advice of the teachers. That was the first
crossroad in my life in which an external force guided me to the right
track. I started to study English myself. The English class had been
stopped for over two years, right after the first book which primarily
covered 26 letters plus very basic
contents. English teachers there also knew very little; it was very
common in formal examinations of English, that some students got better
scores than their English teachers. I entered the University of Iron and Steel Technology Beijing, College of Metal Forming. Such a major was selected because the people in the heavy industry got paid more than others. That year, only 7% of the senior high school graduates in China were accepted by colleges/universities and technician schools (about 3-4% for colleges/universities). My university is one of the top schools in China. Back to the very early 1950s, the Tsinghua University of China (similar to MIT in USA) included so-called the Eight Big Institutions (bada xueyuan). The Iron and Steel Institute was one of them. Later, the Eight Big Institutions all gained independence to form universities of their own, so the Iron and Steel Institute became the University of Iron and Steel Technology Beijing, where I studied. As I was there, China rated the technical capacity of all its universities/colleges, and my department was the No. 1 in the academic field of Metal Forming, through dozens of schools had this academic field, including the Tsinghua University. In the university I did various organization work for students, and improved my communication skills. I was also the champion in the sport event of 1500 meter running in our college. However, in that period I disliked my major and so I devoured most of my time for hobbies (e.g. poetry), so my score in general was not the highest though in some subjects such as mechanics I had the highest score. I usually only spent the last quarter of a semester to intensively complete the class assignments I had missed throughout the semester, and to prepare for the exam. Though some classmates reminded me of being a bad example for classmates for my failure to finish the class assignments, I still received the highest votes (tied with another student named Sun) in the class election for its president. In spite of the fact that my study scores were not the highest, I still consider my undergraduate study to be very successful: the work on my broad hobbies sharpened my mind and improved my quality; I also grew from 1.68m (5'6") to 1.75m (5'9"), changed from a short guy to one of the tallest one in the class (I further grew to 5'10" later). After I got my B. S. degree in July 1985, I was assigned to be an assistant professor for the Professional Training College of Maanshan Iron and Steel Co Ltd. This college was the largest professional training facility in Chinese steel/metal industry. At age of 20, I started teaching steel rolling technology in the college. The interesting thing is that my students there were mostly older than me. I worked there for two years and taught about 200 lecture hours, and led students to the steel plants for practices. Then I went back to the University of Iron and Steel Technology Beijing (its name was then changed to the University of Science and Technology Beijing) for graduate study.In China: General | School & employment | Road abroad
The selection was based on the
criteria of morality, intelligence
and physique. My university, like
others, set up a committee to select a
qualified candidate and to present the candidate to the country (China).
By the time the selection was made,
my scores for all courses attended
were 'A' (Excellent). I also did
various organization work for students and served as the Chief Editor of
an half-official University magazine for students. The foreign language
knowledge was very critical for the selection. At that time, I was the
Class Representative of the English Advanced Class and had the best
English knowledge in the class. The class was formed with the students
in the highest English level, and taught by American teachers. In
addition, I was active in sport and held championship in an early sport
event. This process of selection started from the university and went to
the ministry and up. At the final approval I had lots of documents
including the one signed by then Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang. German Language Training.
Before I went to Germany, I attended a one-year intensive German language
training in a national language center in Guangzhou (the
province capital of Guangdong, near Hong Kong). I also completed a
one-year intensive training for Technical German Language provided by my
University. I had this one-year time because China failed to sent us out
on-time due to the student demonstration incident in June 4, 1989
(another lucky thing for me, thanks God! If I had been in Beijing, in
that position as that magazine's chief editor, it would be very hard for
me to get rid of the political problem. Quite a few students who
worked with me got the problem. After their success in theses and
successful defenses, they were suddenly notified that they receive no
degree nor graduation certificate because of the political problem!) In China: General | School & employment | Road abroad
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You are welcome to contact me.