Recent Stanford MBA Grad Jason Jianyu Tu was born in 1989 in a small village 125 miles south of Xian--in what he termed a sixth-tier city--meaning, "there's a very slim chance you can be successful." (See post one.) His parents, well aware of this, searched for ways out of this small village, and eventually found a path to Xian. (See post two.)
Jason remembers that one move—of 125 miles—as a shock.
“When
I first moved to Xian, I saw buses for the first time in my life. I’d never
been to a KFC before. I’d only seen one on TV. KFC or McDonalds are luxury
foods for kids.
"I grew up totally equipped with a different set of skills.
When I was a kid I knew how to catch frogs and weasels and all kinds of little
animals.”
Not only was Xian a big city, but his new school was much more
competitive than he expected.
“In Chinese school, it’s really interesting. They have the
normal curriculum and they also have something called an experimental class where
they gather all top- performing students into one class and take a much harder
curriculum—kind of like an honors class. As the top performer in my old county,
I got into the top performer’s class. But, I totally sucked.”
Every two weeks they took an exam. Every time Jason ranked in
last place.
“In China it’s much different. There’s no privacy. The
teacher would project the rankings on the wall. Then she would pick on someone
and spend like an hour asking, ‘Why did you do so badly?’
“For some people it is an incentive—they feel ashamed and
want to do better. But for me it was, like, humiliating. And I just gave up. “
(To be continued. Next: Learning English from Blockbusters.)
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