Private Revolutions: Read an excerpt from Yuan Yang's new book on China
On Sunday afternoons, which were sometimes the only spare time she had in the week, June would scrub her clothes by hand while resenting the time she had to waste doing so. She relieved her boredom by listening to podcasts on her smartphone. She particularly liked the speeches of Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental, the country's biggest private education company. . (.)
In 2013, around the time June started high school, a film had been released loosely based on Yu's life called American Dreams in China. Filled with slapstick comedy, it describes the lives of three young men from poor backgrounds who dream of studying in the US. The character based on Yu is repeatedly denied an entry visa, but the three end up founding an English-language tuition company together and striking it rich.
The film includes several dramatic shots of Yu's speeches, superimposed against a stadium of cheering fans: he is a rock star, easy and confident. By the time the film was released, Yu had become a dollar billionaire and was known in China as the godfather of English teaching.
A witty public speaker with a self-deprecating sense of humour, Yu liked to mix personal anecdotes with pep talks:Hew a stone of hope out of a mountain of despair and you can make your life a splendid one.In the beginning, there were no roads in the world; only as people began travelling did roads come into being. Successful roads are formed not when people roam aimlessly, but when they are headed in the same direction. The same is true for New Oriental; it was formed as people gathered to study.
***
June carried on being the top in her class, but she knew it wasn't that good a class. As the three years of high school passed by, university drew nearer. Far from being a dream, it was becoming inevitable. The only uncertainty was where she'd end up. China has around 1,400 universities that grant undergraduate degrees. About a hundred of these belong to the 'Project 211' group of elite universities, where less than half a million students enter each year. The competition to squeeze into China's top universities is higher than almost anywhere else in the world. Overall, China's 211 group admit five out of every hundred students who apply, the same rate as Harvard University. Beijing's Peking University accepts just one in a hundred applicants.
***
Being from a family with a Beijing hukou helps tremendously, because universities have a quota for local students. In one year, Beijing's two top universities took 84 out of every 10,000 applicants from Beijing but fewer than 5 out of every 10,000 applicants from some of China's poorest provinces, including June's. June aimed high for her top five choices. For number 6, her fall-back option, she chose a local university, one she was sure to get into.
Towards the end of high school, Teacher Song visited June in the county town where she was studying. Squeezed between June's classes and her evening study session, Teacher Song took June for dinner at a Western restaurant that had just opened. That invitation in itself – to eat Western food – sounded like a luxury to June, who had spent the previous week eating from street-food stalls.
Sitting in the restaurant, Teacher Song poured tea for June from a glass teapot filled with large owers steeped in a light pink liquid. After they finished eating and got up to leave, June held on to Teacher Song tightly and cried, not knowing when they would see each other again after she finished school: whether she went to university or out to work, she would have to go far from her home town.
'I hope you live very well,' Teacher Song said.
(Excerpted with permission from Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang, published by Bloomsbury; 2024)
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