Ralph Jennings is a journalist who has contributed advice columns to the Beijing-based 21st Centurynewspaper since 2000.
I was working at the China Daily eleven years ago. One day, during an editing shift, a colleague suddenly popped up beside my desk and said the paper’s English-language weekly 21st Century needed an advice columnist and could I do the job.
Sure, I said, but I don’t know what to tell the 10 to 15 people who write in every week with complaints about dark family pasts, bad breakups, test score distress, scholarship corruption and college roommates who steal things.
I have written the “Just Ask” column ever since then, as much as to give the people behind the letters a few trashy lines of advice that they could have thought of themselves as to learn from the students about how things work in China.
The column, which I now write from my kitchen table in Taipei, has become my telescope into the fractious, conflicted lives of the weekly paper’s main readers: Chinese students from grades six through grad school.
I could design a course curriculum on what the column letters taken as a whole say about the risks of going to school in China.
It would cover getting torn between the pursuit of test scores, the traditional parentally approved bedrock of school, and emerging interests of the younger crowd such as dating, speech contests and part-time jobs.
My course outline would hit on the disappointment that sets in when high school students find that their university is either a cesspool of lazy professors or a place so competitive that they can’t sustain the high marks that they got in lower grades.
There would be a lecture on how to get on with roommates: Talk to them even if you don’t like them, otherwise you get ostracized. I would make a note about friction between poor rural university students, usually the most studious, and their urban classmates.
But perhaps my most memorable lesson was that problems reported from middle schools begin an education — for them — in how things really work in multi-layered, barely transparent China. Here are three classics:
The rules don’t matter
Middle school taught Hu Wenjing in 2001 that she could not just follow the rules to succeed. The student from Hubei province would need to master both book smarts and world smarts to stand out in hyper-competitive China, where admissions, scholarships, job hires, plum assignments and promotions are decided by an opaque mix of scores, connections, looks and luck.
I am a senior middle school student. Recently I’ve been puzzled about my studies. We students work hard at our lessons in order to get good marks. I’m this kind of person. For my hard work, I have made great achievements. During the past two years, I did very well in my studies.
But now, in grade three, I feel confused because other students who didn’t study hard got a better mark than I did. They even didn’t finish their homework. I’m a so-called good student. In fact, I often failed exams. Am I a real failure? I believe in “no pain, no gain.” But why have I paid so much and gotten so little? I’ve felt very sad and lost heart.
Persistence
Bamboo-lin of the Guangxi autonomous region discovered in 2002 another long-term lesson: Persistence pays in reaching a major goal. In college and later the job market, the more you fight the more you win.
I am a senior middle-school student and have just taken the National College Entrance Exam. Unfortunately, the result was cruel. I failed. It is really a pity, because I found many problems in the papers which I could do well but did wrong. Many wrongs were due to my carelessness, while others were due to my lack of skill.
Now all that has gone, but sadness comes. Not only tears and fears, but also sorrows attack me, especially when I face my parents. To my comfort, my parents both encourage me to make a great effort to prepare for next year. I will never give up my goal. However, I have no idea how to rebuild my confidence.
Love
The once book-centered definition of “study” has shifted along with China’s wealth and modernization. Chen Peng of Henan province focused his middle school research in 2005 on the study of companions, possibly one lasting a lifetime.
I’m a grade-three middle school student, a handsome boy. I love a girl in another class. I’m very eager to express my love to her. Two months ago, I wrote a love letter, but she hasn’t answered. I think she has refused my request, or because of her busy studies perhaps she has no time to answer, or she hates me.
Anyhow, I’m very anxious about the result. Is it necessary to write a second letter asking her why she hasn’t replied? I don’t know how to deal with this matter. It occupies my mind and affects my study heavily.
Ralph Jennings is a journalist in Taipei. You can find other writings by him and more of the letters he has received over the years, and other writings in the Danwei archive (alternative link).