New vistas of education in China

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By Liu Dong (Global Times) 09:12, September 24, 2013

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Through a crowd of people at the customs at Luohu Port in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, 19-year-old Deng Ce dragged two huge suitcases and three large bags, accompanied by his parents, onto a subway train toward Hong Kong.

Giving up an opportunity to be admitted to a leading university on the mainland, he was excited to embrace four years of study in the island.

Ten years ago when eight government-funded universities in Hong Kong started to recruit undergraduates from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong became an option for millions of Chinese students. Despite the number of applicants of the national college entrance examinations, or gaokao, steadily declined over the past five years, more and more outstanding high school and college graduates have shifted their attention to Hong Kong.

This year, the eight universities from Hong Kong enrolled a total of 1,590 top students from Chinese mainland. Though these were only a handful among 9 million high school graduates, they were almost all ranked in the top 0.1 percent of their respective provinces' gaokao scores. Among them, the 35 top students from the country's provincial and city level regions chose to go to Hong Kong.

Born in 1994, Deng graduated from one of the best high schools in his hometown in China's Southwest Guizhou Province. He ranked 10th in this year's gaokao among a total of 81,566 arts students in Guizhou. He could easily have walked into Peking University Law School after getting an offer, but he chose to go to the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Deng's father hoped his son would go to Peking University to study law and become a judge or an official after graduation. However, after Deng went to Peking University for an interview in March, he changed his mind. "Peking University is good. It has a profound cultural heritage and rigorous atmosphere for scholarly research, but it is not what I want. I want to go to study in a more International atmosphere," he told the Global Times.

A four-year full scholarship of 600,000 yuan ($98,058) provided by the Chinese University of Hong Kong is another key incentive for Deng. For many students hesitating about going to Hong Kong, the high costs and living expenses are still a major barrier. Among 15 classmates from Deng's school who have also gone to study in Hong Kong this year, more than half won various types of scholarships.

Deng's experience is exactly like that of 27-year-old Beijing girl Zhao Han.

In 2005, Zhao gave up an opportunity that many else envied, to study at the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, to go to study at the University of Hong Kong.

Evolving perspective

In 2008, after graduation, Zhao Han smoothly entered into one of the Big Four accounting firms in Hong Kong to start her career.

Many of Zhao's friends see colleges in Hong Kong as a great springboard to pursue a higher degree and life in Western countries.

According to statistics from University of Hong Kong in 2012, about 30 percent of the graduates went to Western countries to pursue higher degrees. Among those who chose to work, 87 percent worked in Hong Kong while only 4.1 percent went back to the mainland. For those who worked in Hong Kong, 90 percent were recruited by transnational enterprises, investment banks and Big Fours.

Being able to get permanent residence after seven years in Hong Kong is also a major goal for many mainland students as they believe it will bring them more opportunities. Most students who come to Hong Kong do so with high expectations that are not always easy to fulfill.

After seven months in the accounting firm, Zhao decided to quit and joined an NGO in Hong Kong.

She described her feeling at the time as "I had been losing myself in the 'luster of the elite' and enjoying a sense of privilege and superiority, until years later I awakened and saw the problems in my life."

This change all started from a visit to several local schools in Hong Kong.

During the visit, the school principal didn't mention how many students had entered into top universities or how high their scores were. Instead, he emphasized how the culture of this school had impacted students to care for and serve the community, while also garnering outstanding academic results.

For example, the school encourages students to respond to calls for help from food banks, collect surplus food from supermarkets and share it with those in need. In addition, the school organizes for students to experience poverty in person, talk with the homeless and understand their plight.

"I saw the enthusiasm and energy of the students in this school and felt the sense of responsibility that young people should have. In my school years on the mainland, opportunities to participate in community service were rare. Everyone told me 'Don't worry about anything else but studying hard.' That vision is so simple with everything leading to the gaokao. Most of my classmates dreamed of being admitted to Tsinghua or Peking University but few asked themselves what would come after that," Zhao said.

"If people only blindly focus on themselves, the more they become immersed in their personal highs and lows, the harder it is for them to find what true contentment is," she said.

Zhao decided to take a break and think about what she really wanted. Finally, she became an employee at a local NGO which is dedicated in assisting the children of migrant workers with education service.

Recently, she made a bold decision to return to her hometown of Beijing, where she deemed that she can better focus on her job in helping the migrant children.

"At first, many students from the mainland are confused about who they are now. Am I a Hong Konger or a Beijinger? I seemed to be both and neither. But then I figured it out, I have a dual identity and I am no longer ashamed about it. It is my advantage to be a link between different people and cultures on both sides," she said after moving back to Beijing this August.