Young China

by Zak Dychtwald

  Bella’s household had some sort of meat, fish, or other seafood every single night for dinner while she was growing up, an achievement that made her grandfather tremendously proud. By Western standards she grew up modestly, but hers was the first Chinese generation that did not largely grow up without such necessities as protein.

  As soon as she started primary school, study became a way of life. Six-year-old Bella would arrive at school at 6:45 a.m. and stay until 4:30 p.m.—nine hours a day, every day. After school Bella would go home and study at the kitchen table while her mom and grandma made dinner, invariably rice, vegetables, and fresh seafood.

  By high school Bella was arriving at 5:30 in the morning and not leaving again until after nine at night. That included Saturdays. By her third year of high school she and her classmates were staying at school until about midnight. Including Sundays.

  High school was split between normal classes and “self-study.” As early as primary school, Bella was placed in a group of academically talented students. Bella’s year had three classes for good students and seven classes for the other students. A group of sixteen-year-olds sitting silently, studying in a classroom after school, seemed unlikely to me.

  “Would you guys actually study? Or would you talk?”

  “Study.”

  “Silently?”

  “Silently. Yes, self-study. If you had a question you could ask the teacher. Of course, you would also have class. Self-study was only at nights and in the early morning. Even the worst students would study on the weekends in their second and third year of high school.”

  Bella was quite young when a teacher told her to come to school more often. I asked her why.

  “Because I’m clever,” Bella blurted out, and her hands immediately shot up to cover her mouth.

  * * *

  No building at Suzhou University, including the library, had heat. Few buildings in southern China are equipped with heat, despite the freezing temperatures. Insulation in most buildings was abysmal—without heat, what is the point?—and the library kept its windows open to air out the stuffy study rooms.

  “We are in the South,” was the typical response. “There is no need.” Suzhou is actually just about smack dab in the middle of China’s coastline, but historically, politically, and culturally, it is a “southern city” and therefore is considered to be hot. It is nearly as far north as you can go in China and not find buildings with central heating.

  Although Suzhou sees snow only once or twice a season, the winter cold could seep into your bones. Most students studying at the library brought a water heater, a thick plastic sack of water covered in felt or faux fur that plugged into the wall and sold for the equivalent of about five dollars at most corner stores. My favorite belonged to Mr. Economics: a water heater with Steve Jobs’s face on the front. Bella took breaks from writing to warm her hands on a light blue water heater with the Disney character Tinker Bell in the top right corner.

  The test designed to find the “best candidate” for a university or graduate program is incredibly thorough although only minimally focused on Bella’s proposed course of study. On Bella’s patch of desk, test preparation materials were stacked up higher than her slim shoulders. The titles gave little indication of the discipline for which she would actually be tested. On the table was a summary of Confucius’s Analects, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, an English grammar book, an abridged modern Chinese history handout, and a primer of “need-to-know” Maoist and Marxist thought. The way she leafed through them made it clear that she was as familiar with them as with a family photo album.

  Bella’s test, like nearly all graduate entrance exams, would have four parts. Two parts would be about her prospective postgraduate degree. A third part would test her knowledge of English. That meant every student testing for any graduate degree had to pass basic English. Maritime engineers who planned to spend their lives lodged in the bowels of a ship needed to understand the correct usage of participles in English. Minority dance ethnographers, people whose careers would take them to areas of China where people didn’t even speak Mandarin, had to be able to conjugate English verbs backward and forward. Failing to test well in English often doomed qualified candidates to second-rate schools in third-tier cities.

  The fourth section, on politics and history, was especially long, although many test takers considered it the easiest. It included concepts they’d been memorizing since primary school. It focused on Chinese history and modern philosophy. Although Bella was testing to become a translator, she still had to have a firm grasp of the political philosophies of Marx, Mao, and Deng. Together, Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory were known as the Three Represents, an awkward translation from Xinhua, the Party news organ. The Three Represents refers to the three schools of thought that best represent the core of the Chinese Communist Party. High school students seeking admission to college, candidates for grad school, and applicants for membership in the Communist Party had to pass tests on the Three Represents to get where they wanted to go.

  The history portion could be a bit trickier. A big chunk includes foreign policies and actions in regard to China. One had to know the politically correct answer. For instance, students anticipate having to write about the territorial conflict between Japan and China involving the Diaoyu Islands (as China refers to them), or the Senkaku Islands (as Japan calls them). China claims historical rights to the Japanese-occupied string of small islands in the East China Sea. The topic might show up on the test in the form of this question: “How did Japan’s aggressive politics violate China’s territorial rights in recent history?”

  Bella was quick, creative, and driven. All of her high school and college teachers recommended her for grad school with the highest praise. With an accountant’s precision she stretched her meager savings from a summer job, and supplements from her parents, to extend her studying time.

  But, for admission, a file of recommendations was worthless. Leadership qualities, extracurricular activities, community service—these didn’t matter at all. Instead, a Chinese student’s future rests on an intense three-day test. Have a bad three days and your future is blown.

  * * *

  No one knew the frustration of the college testing system better than Ou Lei, a student from a city two hours outside Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. The first time a friend brought Ou Lei to my apartment, I thought he had brought his uncle. Ou Lei’s face, although not wrinkled, looked somehow weathered. He had an old man’s belly. He was dressed like the Communist Party cadre they film for CCTV news pieces, bland men in generic polo shirts tucked into generic slacks, their faces expressionless, their heads nodding approvingly as they survey a pile of gravel that will become a hotel or a highway or a Starbucks.

  Everything about Ou Lei was proudly middle-aged, which is why I thought he was lying when he told me he was only twenty-one. Ou Lei’s manners were impeccable. He spoke like a lawyer: concise, professional, and deliberate. A modest, nearly imperceptible laugh seemed to be the greatest indulgence he allowed himself. His hair was parted down the middle. Even to an outsider, he appeared to be a well-groomed Party member. His presence made me painfully aware that I had not swept my apartment in a week.

  Ou Lei explained that he would be matriculating at a university in the fall, which is late for someone his age. In high school Ou Lei had been known as an exceptional student. His teachers had told his parents he should test for admission to Peking University or Tsinghua University, the two most prestigious in China.

  In China people do not say they’ve been admitted to college; they can only “test in.” Admissions rates are not measured by how many students per hundred applicants are admitted but by how many students per ten thousand are admitted. For example, if you are a resident of Beijing, these two universities collectively will accept just eighty-two out of every ten thousand applying from your city—an admissions rate of 0.82 percent.

  While the admissions pro
cess in China is comparatively transparent, geography makes a big difference. Beijingers have it easiest by far. If you are from Guangdong Province, home to the megacities Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Beijing and Tsinghua will collectively accept only two out of ten thousand students. China is made up of twenty-two provinces, four municipalities, five autonomous regions, two special administrative regions, and the disputed Taiwan Province. Each has a different admissions quota, and often those admission quotas reflect developmental goals. Bella’s home province of Zhejiang fares comparatively well, getting spots for twelve students from every ten thousand applicants in 2015. Ou Lei’s home province of Sichuan gets only five. For students in most provinces the combined odds of getting into either of the top universities is about 0.08:100.

  Ou Lei had every advantage in the book. Both of his parents worked in government; his father was a high local official. Ou Lei went to a good boarding school. When he was fifteen, he rented an apartment off campus so he could better focus on studying.

  After we had communicated for some time over WeChat, the social mega-app used by nearly everyone with a phone in China, I took a bus north of Chengdu to Ou Lei’s hometown, where he was doing some work for his father. Within Sichuan Province this city of a few hundred thousand was well known for its generous portions of delicious grilled meat, confirming once again that Sichuaneses’ webs of association are created in their stomachs.

  We sat down at a street stall a few minutes from Ou Lei’s old elementary school. An hour later we had a graveyard of thirty bare skewers, several greasy and garlicky plates of grilled leeks, and big empty bottles of beer. Ou Lei had many questions about my college trajectory, particularly how I had fared on the American college entrance exams, the SAT and ACT. He asked extremely specific questions: What topics were we tested on? What time of day did we take the test? What were the conditions of the testing facility? How many times were students allowed to take the test?

  Finally, he said, “I took the gāokǎo, the Chinese college entrance exam, five times.”

  I choked on a chunk of pork. Ou Lei smacked my back, chuckling his lawyer’s chuckle, his lips hardly moving. The Chinese college entrance exam can be taken only once a year, no matter what. To take it a second time means waiting until the next year rolls around. Ou Lei was implying that he had spent the last five years of his life preparing for, taking, and failing to earn adequate marks on China’s college entrance exam to gain admission to a college that would, in his and his family’s estimation, match his ability.

  “Yes, five times,” he confirmed once I’d regained my composure. “My first failure took place when I was only sixteen as a sophomore in high school. Typically, a young scholar is in their senior year when they take the test. My teachers saw great promise in me, and I was an avid studier.”

  Ou Lei pulled out a picture. The small, square photo showed a bright-eyed kid with lean features.

  “This is me when I was sixteen.”

  The kid in the picture bore little resemblance to the man in front of me. He was handsome and lean with an air of ease in his teenage face.

  “Each time I took the test, I performed under what I, my teachers, and my parents perceived to be my optimum potential. After repeated failures the doctors defined my inability to perform according to expectation as being stress induced. My other medical conditions,” he said, motioning to his belly, “were also determined to be stress induced.”

  Ou Lei and his family finally decided it was better for him to settle for a good, not great, university in Shanghai, where he could build on his father’s relationships. On school breaks he would return home to help at his father’s office. Even though he began taking the gāokǎo at age sixteen, Ou Lei would not finish his undergraduate degree until he was twenty-five.

  “I find it frustrating to be unable to validate my intelligence. I will rely on a 后门, hòumén, a back door, when it comes time to take a job.”

  Ou Lei was referring to using connections, likely family connections, to secure a job. His generation has become loudly defiant of the type of glad-handing and nepotism that seemed to define who got ahead in China’s developing economy in generations past. “I am not proud of it, but I would be foolish not to seize this opportunity,” he told me.

  * * *

  Bella and I sat in the linoleum hall outside her study room, separated from it by thick glass. From here we could see Mr. Economics. Today, I noticed, his shirt looked clean and pressed, his hair coiffed. He had begun to eye me suspiciously every time I came into the library,

  I asked Bella if she liked studying. Her giggles rattled off the library’s metal chairs. She shook her head no. I asked her why she was doing all this if that was the case.

  “I do not know what it is like in your home, but here there are doors to your dreams. China has many people. Those doors are very crowded. Being the very best on one test is the only way for people without connections to enter through those doors,” she told me. “No one in libraries likes studying. But we all love our dreams.”

  Bella grabbed my Chinese notebook and wrote two characters: “决心,” juéxīn. I recognized both but had never seen them expressed together. Bella explained, “This character, 决, jué, means ‘decided’ or ‘determined,’” using my pen to point to the character on the left. The character on the right I already knew. It is one of the first characters a student of the Chinese language learns.

  “Heart.”

  Bella nodded. The two characters—determined and heart—combined to mean determination, to express resolve. Bella nodded emphatically, the trace of a smile lingering on her face. She went back into the study room. Mr. Economics lifted his head to watch her. Both soon fell back into the rhythm of study.

  * * *

  Winter slowly turned to spring, and Bella’s morning walk to the library was no longer the zipped-up shuffle through the stark campus. A carpet of fresh grass had grown, and all of Suzhou University’s cherry blossom trees were in bloom, a sea of pillow-white petals floating overhead.

  For nearly a full year Mr. Economics and Bella had shared the same meter of desk space. One day, with only weeks left before the test, he finally worked up the courage to talk to her, asking, “I’m sorry, could I borrow a pencil?” Flustered, Bella said sorry, she didn’t have any, and kept on working. With that, a flame, guarded in secret for a year, was snuffed out.

  After a year of preparation Bella took the test that would allow her to enter the graduate school training program to become a professional translator. Bella was required to test within her local pool. Because she was not a resident of Jiangsu Province, where Suzhou is located, she had taken a six-hour bus ride back to her hometown of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province. A week later she returned to Suzhou to collect her things. We talked over lunch.

  She told me she had tried her very best on the test. Yet after months of eighty-hour weeks in the library, waking up and going home in the dark, sacrificing sleep, comfort, friendship, and fun, Bella’s score was short by three points. She was in the top 2 percent of testers, but not in the top 0.2 percent.

  Bella would not be going to graduate school this year.

  She had options, though. She could go to an inferior school in central China or take the test again next year, though I doubted she would do either. Toward the end of the studying process, Bella seemed to be sick of academia.

  “Being a translator was never as important as being happy or feeling fulfilled,” she told me. “And for that ideal, my heart remains determined.”

  3

  Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown

  China’s Little Emperors and Their Heavy Expectations

  Jiangguo’s big eyes beamed out from beneath well-styled hair, combed over and sealed in place. A blue argyle sweater with gray and orange accents hung easily from his shoulders. His brown corduroy pants looked newly pressed. Jiangguo looked prepared to discuss his résumé for the position of regional manager at the Samsung semiconductor factory up the street.r />
  Jiangguo was five years old. While he waited for class to begin, his thumb remained mostly in his mouth. The heels of his Velcro-close shoes lit up every time he shifted his weight. He stood in a row with four other children in the center of the high-tech classroom. Their gazes were trained on my right hand, where Cici, my puppet and co-teacher, rested.

  I sighed. It was difficult to shake the feeling that in front of me were the little emperors I had heard so much about before I came to China. China’s one-child policy meant that all of a multigenerational family’s attention and resources were heaped on just one kid. The result was expected to be a generation that had been spoiled rotten, the so-called little emperors.

  The uncomfortable implication was that if these were China’s little emperors, I was their court jester. After all, I was dressed in a highlighter-orange jumpsuit, with my right arm elbow-deep in a green turtle hand puppet. I taught weekends at a training school for wealthy preschool and kindergarten students. The national media, government, and parents alike have attacked China’s education system for producing good testers but not good thinkers, creators, or team players. My school offered a solution. It aimed to plant the seeds of English through immersion learning while its young students became comfortable with technology. It emphasized group play and team building. Students who grow up as only children often need practice playing with others their age, especially in China where the emphasis on rote learning is high and the number of children with siblings is low.

  I looked at the turtle puppet. He looked at the crowd. Together we pronounced the word microscope with exaggerated slowness. His wide-set, googly eyes bounced and bobbled as he surfed over the heads of Jiangguo and his classmates, asking them in English, “What amazing technology are we going to learn about today?” The two young Chinese teaching assistants translated in singsong voices.