Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

A story that you might want to miss!

London is very artistic and impressive but also super expensive. Many people who don’t have a pocket filled of money may love it or hate it. But who you were before you came to London?

I grew up in a small town in China where very few people went to university. I was a top student in the elementary school and I became a pride of my family. So when it’s time for junior high school, my parents sent me to one of the best school in a city instead of my small town. I still remembered that my mum took me to see a teacher, a distant relative, who taught English in that school. With some chickens and eggs to thank for her and also with my determination to get a better education, I got a quota for that school.

It was not easy for me to get along with classmates from city and also the fast pace of study. I had never learned any English in elementary school and it was a nightmare for the English class. The English teacher asked me to come to her office and she told me that I got the opportunity mainly because the relationship with my mum and if I did not work hard, I would be expelled. That was really a nightmare. I had never been outside of my hometown and I even did not know how to take a bus. The only thing I could do was to spend extra time memorizing new English words and practiced what I had learned until I could recognize every word and its pronunciation as I was really afraid to be expelled.

I stayed with the brother of my grandpa who was the only person in my town who went to university during the cultural revolution in China. He had a big house inside the hospital because he was a math teacher and his wife was a doctor. They got the house assigned from government due to the policy, very nice house and close to the city and my school.

Both of my new grandparents were very nice people and they taught me a lot about how they went through university with very little in Mao’s time. But both of them were disabled so most of time when I was home, I fed them and helped them move around if I finished my homework. However, just shortly before my high school entrance examination, my grandma died and I still remembered I was in the intensive care unit to prepare for the exam and keep an eye for her simultaneously. Soon my grandpa died. They were my best friends at that time and I was really sad during that summer vacation.

After junior high school, I was unable to go to the best high school because my score did not meet the requirements so I went to a local high school, not in a high ranking. Surprisingly I became the top 1 in my class for the first semester. However, being an adolescent while parents were not around me for 9 years and I became somewhat rebellious. Also, internet became a very big distraction among students at that time and I spent hours playing games and chatting online with friends or just exploring Internet. I was passionate to do everything except studying as I was really tired of boring class and teachers. Life was really just about all kinds of subjects and everyday teachers would inspire you to study hard but what for? I was not sure.

Maybe partly due to frustration, failure from entrance exam for high school, I was not confident and kept self-suspecting plus my parents never asked me how I felt about my time in school but just kept pushing me to study harder, I became very rebellious and started to skip the class. After the first semester, I told my parents that I wanted to drop out of school. “ why should I go to school?”

My parents answered: “ Only if you go to university can you have a bright future.”

My classmates answered: “ We don’t know and our parents want us to go to school”

What’s future like?

I don’t know. Quarrels and arguments between me and my family made the situation worse. Nobody supported me to drop out of school but they could not convince me of why I should go to school. When it came to registration for a new semester, I did not go and I insisted staying at home . My parents gave up urging me to go back to school.

So what can I do without going to school? 15 years old at that time, most of my peers who dropped out of school would go to big cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou for a job. I went to Shanghai where my elder sister worked in a industrialized town and a lot of big companies had their factories there. Squeezed in a very small room with my elder sister, I started to find a job using a fake identification. What’s a job? I had no idea. Some entry level job did not require too much experience and education attracted my attention. So cashier, waitress and industrial worker became my very first jobs, 12 hours of work in a day, day and night shift, half a year passed with much more pain and frustration, before the start of a new semester in high school, I decided to go back to school. However, no high school wanted me as I did not even go through the procedure of suspending schooling. What was lucky was I had a uncle who worked in a high school in my hometown, very close to where I lived. But that high school was “famous” for the violence, teenager pregnancy and dropout rate. I had no other choice. Due to my high performance on former senior high school and junior high school, they accepted me with free tuition.

However, I was stressed because in that town, most of locals knew that I went to the best junior high school in our city and I dropped out of school and then I went back to school again. Even my parents felt ashamed of me. Having had experienced the life as a cheap labor worker, I realized that even though I did not understand why I should go to school but I knew for a teenager like me, going to school or university was the only way to see a bigger world that small town where most of my cousins and friends went back to is fulled with low paid industrial worker, farmer, early marriage. I became very motivated to study hard in school as I knew I would leave that poor town one day. So I started to search information online for high school in the capital city of our province, Changsha. I found a private high school was recruiting transfer students. So I phoned them and asked if I was able to take part in the exam and they said yes you could come to participate our admission exam. So I went there, my first time to visit Changsha, a very big and metropolitan city.

Then I took the exam. Due to one semester’s hard work, my score reached to their admission standard but the tuition was extremely expensive for me. So I went to the headmaster’s office and I asked whether I can have my tuition exempted. He checked my score of exam, math, Chinese and English, for a while. I told him that I came from a small town and I came here by myself. Also I had a very strong desire to change my life there. He said I could consider about it as we did not have policy to offer scholarship for transfer students. Kind of hesitate, but he agreed to take my request into consideration. He asked me to wait for a call tomorrow. I still remembered during that night, I was so anxious and nightmare came to my dream over and over again to inform me that I was rejected. But the good news came to me eventually and I got the full scholarship. I even haven’t told my parents before I came for that exam but they were so happy for me afterwards.

2 years and a half in the capital city of a private high school, I realized how much I could learn and how little I could get in a small town. My first time to attend an English class with a foreign English teacher and my first time to travel with my friends for Shanghai Expo in 2010, also my first time that I realized life could be so much different. Actually most of my classmates’ family were very rich and very few students like me got there because of scholarship.Spending time with rich students could be hard but they brought their experience of traveling to me and I was determined to travel to as many places as I can if I have enough money. In 2011, I was admitted by an university in the north of China, very close to Beijing, majoring bioengineering. So I successfully became the first university student in my family.

University was easy to graduate for most students in China after we finished the national examination, the biggest exam in China. What to do in a 4-year university? I studied bioengineering while I had very little interest and I was unable to change my major. So I was determined to read as many books as I can to fulfill my university life. I was not sure which book could interest me so I went to the bookshelf from A to Z. The first semester, I came to realize that my interest was primarily based on human and social science. History, philosophy, geography and psychology caught my eyes. Also, I realized English could be super important. So I spent most of my time reading and learning English online. That’s where I encountered Chris in coursera in 2013, we attended the same course, “ How to change the world”. I followed Chris for almost 2 years and he was the main person who introduced new ideas to me that fulfilled my university life.

What was a coincidence was that my elder sister married to my brother-in-law who had an educational company and he was passionate for helping students. I got the chance to work for him for all my summer and winter vacation, teaching, mentoring, consulting for students. I even spent 3 of my birthday in the company as I had to make more money to pay for my tuition and also have some savings. That’s important but I also held a very strong passion to share my experience with them.

I realized educating young people and inspired them to have their dreams and follow their hearts could interest me a lot by talking for hours with them. I can’t say that’s my passion at that time. However, as I worked longer, I found what I preferred to do was to mentor them, coach them and help them to get over their puzzles and difficulties and be tough. The feeling became stronger and stronger and very shortly after my graduation, Chris invited and sponsored me to visit the International Children’s Festival in Washington DC. That was a free trip and because of that trip, Chris decided to lift my life to a higher level and I went back to the US after I worked for 3 months in China.

The US experience had dramatically changed my perspectives toward companies, business, education and human development internationally and the world. I read a lot of books and movies about civil rights among African Americans but I never knew Black people are still in a very disadvantaged situation and I did not know that compared with white people, they are so connected with violence, crime, homeless, unemployment, prostitution and drugs. A lot of stories and histories I read through books become very close around my life. In the US, I witness how people promised to work on the UN goals but become greedy for money and fame instead. I also witness how people committed to make a positive change but struggle to find the right people and connection.

“ I can’t visit New York without thinking about John Lennon. I grew up with his spirit spinning inside my head. He was an artist, a poet, a crusader and a visual thinker. He inspired me and many of my generation. He still has his detractors — those who would undermine what he said.” John Caswell, my recent great mentor and friend.

“Live with not knowing and find peace with uncertainty.” by Harrison Owen, the founder of Open Space Technology, whose philosophies accompanied with me when fear of not knowing came to me. What’s your life story with a great mentor?

Before I came to the US, my primary goal was to make a lot of money and I had not really thought about “consciousness”. Money still matters a lot for me as I know how hard life could be without enough money to support the family and my parents never finish even high school. Due to one-child policy in China, my parents got a huge fine after a third child in my family. In the massive flood in 1997, we were homeless and everything was donated.

What can you do if you are poor? What can you do without education?

Poverty could be your past and ending your poverty could be possible. But you can never be a poor person because of poverty!