Waking up is one thing, getting up is another

Why I left Peking University

First of all, I would like to talk about the "going abroad fever" at that time. I remember that when I came to Peking University in 1980, there were almost no students who went abroad. But in 1982, some of my university classmates left Peking University to study abroad because they had relatives abroad and were willing to sponsor them. In addition, we English majors were able to read Western books and watch Western movies. At the same time, we started to have direct contact with foreigners, for example, two foreign teachers were teaching us English in the English major at Peking University. At that time, the wave of going abroad had not yet started. I remember that when we graduated from college, our whole class took a TOEFL test without preparation. At that time, the teacher had a playful mentality and said, "You guys take the test for fun," so we took the TOEFL that year. I remember that I scored 520 on the TOEFL, while the full score of TOEFL at that time should be 673 or 677. After graduating from college, almost all the students in my class were assigned to units in China, from government agencies to high schools and universities, but not many of them went abroad. 1986 onwards, there was a sudden boom in going abroad in China.

In 1988, my friends around I started to go abroad one by one. I thought that if I stayed at Peking University to teach and did not go abroad for further study, I would lose the opportunity in the future world. So in 1987 and 1988, I started to prepare myself for the exams abroad, including TOEFL and GRE (Graduate Record Examinations in the United States). Since I was an English major, the TOEFL was relatively easy for me, and I scored 673 after two months of studying, which was a very high score at that time. The English teacher I was studying with at the time only scored 580. Then came the GRE. This was more difficult for me because my math was at a zero level, so I put all my effort into reviewing the math and logic questions required for the test. The good thing is that I did quite well on the vocabulary test, and in the end, my score was not particularly high, about 700 - the full score is 800 - but it was a good score because the average score for Chinese test takers at that time was 400-500.

After taking the TOEFL and GRE, my next task was to prepare carefully for going abroad. Around the second half of 1988, I contacted 20 to 30 American universities. At that time, I was interested in two majors: one was comparative literature and the other was international relations. So, I contacted some schools along those lines. Originally in 1989, I was still trying hard to contact American universities and trying my best to get a scholarship to prepare myself to go abroad. Because at that time, American universities gave out very few scholarships to Chinese students, but I thought I should still have a chance as a student at Peking University. But then, due to some special circumstances, I completely threw the matter of going abroad to the side. By the time the situation stabilized, it was June of that year, and the scholarship awards as well as admissions for all the universities in the United States had been completed. Moreover, my mind was not on going abroad at that time, and I just put off going abroad.

Immediately after that, I went into a period of mental repair. After the repair period, I realized that I had to earn my own money to study in the U.S. because I had no scholarship. So, having passed my exams abroad and having nothing else to do, I waited for the next year to continue to contact American universities. In the meantime, I continued to teach at BYU. It was easier for me to teach because I taught the same content as before, and I only had to attend eight hours of class each week, and the rest of the time was my own. At that time, the salary I received at BYU was relatively low, and I couldn't study abroad on my salary. So, I got the idea to go out and earn money by myself and started to participate in teaching TOEFL and GRE courses in some training institutions. That's how I got an income of one or two thousand dollars a month, which was almost ten times higher than my salary at BYU. So this gave me a revelation and made me feel that I would earn money faster if I went to join a training course to teach.

But later, I felt that it would be better to teach in a classroom than to open my classroom, so I set up a TOEFL class at BYU. This TOEFL course had no staff and no license - I didn't know where to get a license at that time, and I was still a regular teacher at BYU. But it was not difficult to enroll, because I was still a teacher at Peking University, and because I was playing the signboard of Peking University, so 20 to 30 students came to the class.

At that time, my students at Peking University also helped me to post ads, we allied teachers and students to open training courses. The direct impact of this incident on me is that I found out that I can do business. We all know that southerners are naturally good at business, which can be seen from the fact that there are nearly 50 listed companies in my hometown of Jiangyin.

But there is also a problem with our approach, that is, we do not have a license. Therefore, we couldn't do things openly and honestly, and I was also a teacher at Peking University. At that time, Peking University also had a TOEFL course, and this course was a source of spare income for teachers at Peking University, especially for teachers in the English department. And I opened this course is the same as stealing the student source of the TOEFL course in Peking University, because the students come to my class, and the students there will be reduced accordingly. So the leaders of Peking University talked to me and said I can't do this because I am a teacher at Peking University and I can't steal business with Peking University.

But this is no way, because of the training course at Peking University, I can not go to a lecture, and I was not allowed to lecture, so I said I am still willing to open my training course. Later, I had some arguments and even conflicts with the leaders of Peking University. Finally, Peking University gave me an administrative demerit. My administrative demerit was posted in the famous triangle of Peking University for a whole month and broadcasted by tannoy for about a week, which was the first time in my life that I was famous. At that time, there were already some students at Peking University who had taken my class and knew me, so this was a very interesting scene.

Originally I still wanted to stay at Peking University, because at that time my ideal was to study abroad, and after I succeeded in studying abroad, for example, I came back to continue to work as a teacher at Peking University, to have a comfortable life. For me, it was a comfortable life to read every morning and take a walk around the Wiring Lake. And I was already married at that time, so I wanted to have a stable life.

But I suddenly found that after being disciplined, I had fallen behind in many aspects at Peking University: for example, in the allocation of houses, at that time the state still allocated houses, because I had been disciplined, it was not my turn; Peking University wanted to send people abroad for further training, but also not my turn. Some people would say to me, "Look, so-and-so was not disciplined and has the same qualifications as you, and neither of them went abroad for further studies, so how could it be your turn?" I found that in this system, the matter of being disciplined would have a big impact on me during that time and even for the rest of my life!

So, I had an idea: since I had fallen behind at Peking University, and my salary was still so low, I might as well leave Peking University and go out to teach, and earn much more money than I do now, and after I go out, I will then open a training course, and there will be no one to give me disciplinary action! I made a decision: instead of having a bad life at Peking University, I should leave on my initiative.

So in 1990, I submitted my resignation report to Peking University and then used a tricycle to pull all my belongings from the dormitory to leave Peking University and rent a house outside. At that time, there were no apartment houses for rent in Beijing, so I rented a farmer's house, which was in a place called Liulangzhuang to the west of Peking University, although the name Liulangzhuang is still in use now, the village has been demolished. In this way, I left Peking University, which is the origin of the whole thing. The so-called "fledgling" is when I left Peking University. However, it was because I left Peking University and left the shelter of Peking University that I was able to move forward with my career and the development of New Oriental. So, this is in line with the old Chinese saying: "People move to live, trees move to die." When I left Peking University, I was still very miserable inside. But today, it seems that desolation is unnecessary, because although I left a comfort zone where I felt extremely safe and walked into the storm, as everyone often says: only after the storm can we see the rainbow.