School of thought
Students, of all ages, show the true meaning of education in documentary that sheds light on university spirit, Xu Fan reports.
When Wang Jing was studying at the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University, she stumbled upon a heartwarming notice. It was a pivotal moment. The notice had been released by Song Yuntian — the 40th president of the students’ union in the university — on his personal WeChat account.
Song, then a doctoral student majoring in hydraulic engineering, took inspiration from Japanese novelist Keigo Higashino’s The Miracles of the Namiya General Store.
In order to help fellow students tackle their worries and reduce stress, Song placed three boxes at his dormitory building, two for exchanging letters for those who needed suggestions and one filled with candy as it is a surefire way to improve people’s mood.
Wang was deeply impressed by this novel practice, teasingly commenting below the online notice that she wished she could be transferred to the hydraulic engineering department with such a caring senior.
Such a “dream” didn’t come true, but Wang got a new opportunity to get to know Song better a few years later.
In 2018, Wang and Sun Hong, also educated at the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University, were tapped by their professor Lei Jianjun to join the documentary project, The Great Learning.
As a program to mark the 110th anniversary of the founding of Tsinghua University, the documentary opened in theaters across the country on July 9.
Currently, the film has earned 8 points out of 10 on the popular review site Douban. It is the latest cinematic retelling of the prestigious university’s spirit after the 2018 star-studded blockbuster, Forever Young, and the recent documentary One Day When We Were Young.
Wang and Sun — who co-directed the film alongside another departmental schoolmate Ke Yongquan — planned to attract an audience of youngsters in modern society.
“For most young people, their university years are a key period in their development, playing a significant role in shaping the rest of their lives,” says Sun, credited for a series of documentaries, including The Tale of Chinese Medicine.
“We have been curious about what universities can bring to their students and how plans for their careers and their future will be influenced,” she adds.
With the crew members all from Tsingying Film, a studio affiliated to the Tsinghua University, the directors started to search for ideal candidates — ones who represent the university’s spirit in their respective fields.
Aside from Song, the directors also convinced three other students and teachers to join the documentary as “protagonists”.
These were Yan Yunzhou, a freshman; Cai Zheng, a young scientist who has returned from the United States to work at Tsinghua University, and Qian Yi, an 86-year-old professor at its School of Environment.
Interwoven in parallel lines, the feature unfolds with the nerve-wracking moment as Yan checks his scores in the gaokao, or the college entrance examination. A native of Shanghai, the then 18-year-old earned the top score in a physics examination specially organized by Tsinghua University to recruit young talent, but his gaokao score turned out to be less than that of the university’s admission threshold. Luckily, the young man was admitted by the university’s computer science department based on the talent he displayed in the physics exam.
“When we started the shooting in 2018, the time was close to gaokao,” recalls Sun. “As we couldn’t guess who would finally be admitted by Tsinghua University, we started following several high school students. Yan’s tale was the most interesting and dramatic.”
In the documentary, Yan’s story depicts him both as a shy boy in a suit attending his first college dance party, and assuredly joining his classmates to prepare for the first semester’s final exams.
“Interestingly, you can sense the pure happiness in learning, which has an infectious quality,” says Sun. “The students majoring in the sciences really find solving puzzles entertaining.”
While Yan’s tale gives the directors a nostalgic hint of their early campus years, Song’s struggle to chart a career in his final, or ninth, year in the university, unveils a graduate’s ambition and sense of responsibility.
Despite having to leave his girlfriend who lives in Beijing, Song, from rural Henan province, rejected an offer from his alma mater to stay on as a teacher, instead returning to his hometown to work as Party chief for a village. He has since been promoted to be a town head.
“His grandmother had worked as a village Party chief for more than 30 years. His parents are both college teachers,” Wang explains. “I believe Song has been influenced by his family, yearning to serve the locals in his home province for a long time.”
Cai, one of the four people featured in the documentary, exemplifies Chinese scholars’ patriotism. After earning a PhD from the University of Arizona, Cai worked at UC Santa Cruz in California between 2015 and 2019, before returning to Beijing to land an academic job at the astronomy department at Tsinghua. His main goal is to develop the next-generation spectral telescope to unravel more of the universe’s mysteries in space.
“Cai was promoted to associate professor,” Wang says.
The most difficult to get in front of the camera was, surprisingly, Qian Yi, the revered octogenarian professor.
Despite being the daughter of Qian Mu, one of the greatest historians and philosophers in the 20th-century China, Qian Yi, also an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, humbly believes that some of the other elderly professors from the university are more deserving of the attention.
“Professor Qian Yi refused us twice,” Wang says. “The third time we sent her a handwritten letter, sincerely expressing our wish to include her in the production. She finally agreed to see us in her office on the first day of 2019, and she delivered her own demands. She said she hoped we would use her as a cue to film other elderly professors who have yet to receive enough attention.”
There is one scene in the documentary that is etched in Sun’s mind. It features Qian Yi “paying a New Year call” to her 101-year-old teacher Xu Baojiu on Lunar New Year’s Eve.
“When Qian Yi was about to leave Xu’s home, our photographers turned the camera to a painting on a wall. Underneath it was written ‘presented by your student Qian Yi’. Suddenly, I managed to picture Qian Yi as a young woman. I also pictured how she decided to take on the responsibility of education from her teachers, a mission she has devoted her entire life to fulfilling,” says Sun.
“From Qian Yi to Song, Yan and Cai, they are people who all have the light in their eyes. I hope every one of us can discover the light in our lives and to pursue our dreams,” she concludes.