TALKING POINTS
Evan Xie, 16, who is from eastern China but attends King’s-Edgehill boarding school in Windsor, N. S., has just earned the title of International Master of Memory at the World Memory Championships in China — an honour held by only 160 people
A NOT- SO DAUNTING TASK
The Grade 10 student thought the idea of becoming a Master of Memory was “cool”. So he started practising. Xie says his memory is photographic. As part of the competition he memorized more than 1,000 randomly ordered digits in one hour, memorized 12 decks of randomly shuffled cards in one hour, and a single deck of cards in about 32 seconds — 28 seconds under the time limit.
TRAINING WILL CONTINUE
Xie says he trained for 10 hours a day leading up to the competition last month, where nearly 300 people from across the globe competed over three days. Even after earning his title, he’s not satisfied with resting on his laurels. “I will keep practising, but just in my free time... Soon I’ll be in university. I want to improve my English, because it’s my second language.”
STEPPING OUT OF HIS HEAD
When he trains, Xie is alone. So he likes to spend his free time in the company of his friends. “If I’ve been memorizing the whole day, it makes me crazy. So I need to find someone to talk to.”
PRACTISE MAKES PERFECT
“When I was just three years old my mom figured out I had a good memory,” says Xie. “My mom read a book to me and I didn’t know what the words meant, but I memorized that book. I could repeat it to my mom.” Intense mental focus is needed. Xie says he can be thrown if others make a small noise. “When I’m remembering, it’s to a rhythm. It’s a beat.”
MEMORIZATION MAKES SCHOOL EASY
The amazing skill he’s gained is helping him in high school. “I have a test tomorrow. I could just review for one or two hours, for the whole year since it started and tomorrow I will have a good mark.” His favourite courses are history, geography and some parts of science and biology. But he finds the memorization helps more with numbers than Shakespeare.