我的中学和大学

My Middle School and College Years

> By Colin Huang · 2016-02-18 · [Original link](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/f8pNeLSRejLn0hK4nCk2cw) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

My primary school was on the outskirts of Hangzhou and should count as very ordinary, but by sheer dumb luck I tested into a somewhat special middle school in Hangzhou, Hangzhou Foreign Languages School. According to my primary school teacher, I was the only one from our primary school in the 9 years before and after to test into this middle school. Life is sometimes rather dramatic: at the time I had won a prize in the Math Olympiad, and then my teacher had me go take the exam. Before I went to take it, I barely knew what this middle school was for, and I certainly did no reviewing, preparing, practice papers or anything like that. After I got the admission notice, I even told my teacher I didn't want to go; from the name I thought it was a school that taught nothing but foreign languages. I said I wanted to go to a different middle school that was strong in math, physics and chemistry. Later the primary school principal called me in and persuaded me to go, and only then did I go. Thinking back on it later: good thing I went!

Hangwai [Translator's note: 杭外, the short name of Hangzhou Foreign Languages School] was a good middle school. The teachers and classmates were all very good. In the early 90s we already had foreign teachers, foreign middle school students came on exchanges, and there were chances to go abroad for a home stay. It was at the time the only school in Zhejiang Province that could recruit on its own across the whole province at the primary-to-junior-middle-school stage; every other junior middle school enrolled students from nearby, so it could pick primary school graduates within the province as a monopoly. In addition, it ran a six-year continuous program, and from junior to senior middle school people could only leave, not come in. Its rate of students recommended to university without the entrance exam was also very high, above 80% every year, so getting into this middle school was almost the same as getting into university. The teachers' teaching was therefore relatively less affected by the college entrance exam, and a lot of the time the teachers "played it their own way". I remember we spent quite a few classes watching American blockbusters (at the time, it seems, American blockbusters were rarely shown in cinemas in China).

Our middle school at the time took roughly 160 students a year, the great majority admitted by score in a unified exam. There were also a small number whose scores were a bit short and who came in by paying a sponsorship fee. Among the 160 there were also quite a few children of officials and children of the rich. From the first year of junior middle school, boarding was compulsory, and every day, from the morning run to evening self-study to bedtime, we were together. Our exchange with and influence on one another were much greater than at other middle schools, and our relationships with each other were also fairly close. These 6 years from 12 to 18 made this small group of us influence one another and form values and a worldview not quite the same as people from other middle schools. Compared with other middle schools, we were influenced by Western culture earlier, more deeply, and in a larger proportion. A considerable part of us were somewhat more liberal than others our age.

After graduating from Hangwai I was recommended without the exam into Zhejiang University's Mixed Class. The Mixed Class was the predecessor of Zhejiang University's Chu Kochen Honors College, and counted as an experiment in elite higher education. Each year, people recommended into Zhejiang University and people with fairly high college entrance exam scores could take a selection exam for the Mixed Class (with a written test and an interview). About 200 people could get into this class, and then "enjoy" "treatment" not quite the same as the students who went directly into departments. For the first two years this class wasn't split into departments; we studied the basic courses of science and engineering, with harder textbooks and very good teachers. But at the end of each semester a certain proportion of students would be eliminated down into the departments. If you weren't eliminated in the two years, then at the end of the two years you could choose an advisor and enter a lab. Your major was then naturally set by your advisor's field.

Although Zhejiang University still couldn't compare with Tsinghua in overall resources and strength, the resources, opportunities and freedom the Mixed Class enjoyed were still very decent. On the one hand, the advisor system gave students a very good excuse to drop some courses that wasted time or were boring. On the other hand, some resources and opportunities across the whole university that weren't easy to divide up would often land on the Mixed Class.

For example, the Melton Foundation, which I was lucky enough to be selected for in my first year, is one example. This Foundation was founded in the early 90s by the founder of Verifone, the leader in POS machines. He had already successfully sold Verifone by then, and had also invested in AOL and PayPal. When he saw the Berlin Wall fall, he realized the world was going to change a great deal, so he had an idea: in representative emerging areas around the world at the time, select some young students and let them exchange with each other over the long term and grow together, and perhaps in the future they could together bring some positive change to the world. Zhejiang University's Mixed Class was the only place in China where the Melton Foundation selected fellows. The other four places were India, East Germany, Chile and the Black areas of the United States. Each area had 5 people a year; once selected, you'd be given a computer and a full year of free internet access, so you could first build connections online with your peers in the other areas by email and IM, and then every year everyone would fly to one member country, stay together for about 10 days for the annual meeting, and discuss and play together. The once-a-year gathering gave me the chance to observe up close the daily habits of my peers from other countries. One by-product was that it got me used to Indian English very early. This was without doubt a great help to me later when I went to the US for graduate school and work, listening to Indian teachers in class and communicating with Indian colleagues.

This foundation didn't have much influence on society as a whole, but its influence on me and the fellows who were with me was very great. It made me deeply realize how different the different races and different cultures of the world are. Their starting points, their ways of thinking about problems and their ways of doing things were things I had known nothing about before and could hardly have imagined. Our foundation didn't have many people, and the relationships we formed were relatively tight; within it, not only did many couples form among the Chinese students, many cross-national couples formed as well.

Thinking back now, compared with others my age, my experience in middle school and university was very, very lucky, and could even be called somewhat special. This experience gave me, very early on, rather deep impressions about a few things:

A golden phoenix flying out of a mountain gully is a low-probability event. Most children of the rich, and especially children of officials, are very excellent.

Tian Ji's horse race: you can create a local advantage while at an overall disadvantage in resources, and so get the chance to win the whole "campaign". From this, ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things. [Translator's note: 田忌赛马, a classical Chinese story in which Tian Ji wins a three-heat horse race against a king with better horses by matching his worst horse against the king's best and his better horses against the king's weaker ones.]

Money is a tool, not a goal.

My middle school and university were on the whole lucky and full, but there is also a not-small regret, which is that I was too clearly goal-oriented, wasted too much time chasing first place and working hard to be a good student, and lost a lot of time for rebelling, making mischief, and purely enjoying youth. "Long live 60 points is a good philosophy" is something I only slowly came to grasp many years later. [Translator's note: 60分万岁, "long live 60 points", a Chinese student saying meaning a bare pass (60 out of 100) is good enough.]

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