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Top student’s change of heart should be lauded
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THE humble dream of a xueba is a big puzzle for many. Xueba, an online neologism that literally translates as “study overlord,” recently became a buzzword used to describe those who excel at academic studies.
Liu Dingning, a student from northern China’s Liaoning Province, is a typical xueba. Of all the students from Liaoning, she scored the highest marks on the national college entrance exam, or gaokao — twice, which is exceptional.
She enrolled last year in the University of Hong Kong (HKU), with a scholarship grant of more than HK$700,000 (US$89,600). However, the girl didn’t feel she belonged, and quit her studies. Then she resolved to return to her high school and toil for another year to achieve admission to her dream school, Beida, or Peking University. She succeeded this year and will become an undergraduate majoring in Chinese classics in September.
Normally, her academic excellence would have elicited roaring applause from admirers. But surprisingly, she has been a target of jeers and sneers.
Critics slammed her for wasting education resources, saying that her admissions at two different institutions came at the price of others. Some criticized her as a mere “testing machine,” a product of the notoriously exam-oriented education system and rote learning on the mainland. No wonder she felt ill at ease with a “cosmopolitan” education environment in Hong Kong. This is a case of Gresham’s law proving right in the realm of education, of bad money being driven out by good money, they say.
Although their reasoning is apparently tinged with jealousy, critics point to some seemingly convincing facts. According to the latest survey of world universities, conducted by Times Higher Education magazine, HKU ranked 43, while Beida lagged behind at 45. Besides, in recent decades the Beida that Liu pined for has been mockingly christened a “prep school” for postgraduate studies in the United States. In the eyes of many, it has lost its glamour as a bastion of independent thinking and academic enterprise.
As a product of the domestic education system myself, I am not sure which school embraces the stronger academic rigor, Beida or HKU, or which better represents the traditional spiritual life in the ivory tower, free from worldly distractions. But I believe they stand for distinct education practices and values, and both possess their deficiencies, which ought to be appreciated in full view. As such, Liu has the legitimate right to decide which better suits her.
The controversy surrounding her choice is revealing in a way that it both illustrates popular frustrations with the current education establishment in China and the fact that Liu and her detractors are not thinking along similar lines.
Liu’s actions are actually motivated by her academic obsessions, so much so that she was willing to sacrifice all that is gained — not just the scholarship — and start anew at great personal risk. She deserves accolades for her bravery and tenacity. Her critics, however, are of the cynical view that all she did was perpetuate a system that’s enormously grueling and efficient in stifling creativity.
It’s unfair to mock someone for holding on to her pursuits and to direct the somewhat cliched criticism of a system against a girl who is incapable of changing it.
Indeed, Chinese universities are sadly becoming diploma mills often associated with the very thing their founders would be against — lost values and cheapened tastes. The recent publicity stunt orchestrated by a host of schools, including such prestigious ones as Tsinghua, to enroll students by advertising the “beautiful girls” that populate them, is a case in point.
However, that shouldn’t be a license for self-righteous critics to negate the merits of the education system altogether, or to attack those who appear to endorse it, like Liu.
After all, the unfettered pragmatism permeating our universities cannot be blamed squarely on a few individuals.
In effect, Liu’s obsessions are an antidote to such pragmatism, because she picked Chinese classics as her major, a subject not known for its money-making potential. And she got there not on some terms specially created in her favor, but by respecting the precept of equal opportunity and sitting the test again.
The right to choose again
The online edition of People’s Daily carried a commentary last Wednesday written by commentator Ren Xiaokang, who commended Liu on her perseverance. Yet Ren also lamented the dearth of mechanisms that could save her the trouble to study for new admission.
In the US, Ren wrote, college students have a second chance of being entertained by other institutions should they reapply. China should have the same system that enables young people to choose again. Alas, its college system is highly closed, with little exchange within it. It surely needs to become more open, but apart from harping on about all the well-known ills it manifests, cynics aren’t doing much to improve it.
From this perspective, Liu’s choice is all the more respectable, for her aspiration is in keeping with the traditional emphasis on hard work and perseverance, which are part and parcel of what so-called “university spirit” stands for.
Maybe she’ll find to her dismay that Beida isn’t entirely the ivory tower she pictured.
But her struggle to qualify for it will be a lifelong treasure. While many cynics say Liu will have her moment of disillusionment before long, I trust her to be able to prove them wrong, because dedication and a positive mind are a universal recipe for success, whether in Hong Kong, Chinese mainland or elsewhere.
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