The path from a cowherd to Microsoft

Life is a journey; it is a process, not a destination.

Part One - A dream where it started.

I was a wimpy kid. A B- and C+ student from elementary school till high school.?I was born in a mountain village, in southwestern China. When I was a kid, it took me 3 hours to walk to the nearest town to buy stuff like candy, pencils, or a backpack. My fellow villagers will carry 50 to 100 pounds of food such as rice, potato, and corn that we plant for a living to the town to exchange the cash so we can buy the merchandise that we cannot produce ourselves in the village.

But I was so lucky that both my dad and mom knew how important education is to my future life. My father quit school at 14 years old because there was no money in the family. My mom just finished elementary and stayed with the family to help around. They both determined to send my older sister and I go to school with their best efforts. My parent treated my sister and me equally, which was rare back in the '80s in China's rural village. To some degree, they put a stricter standard on me because of my naughty nature.

When I was 6, my mom had a conflict with the only teacher in the village. The cost is substantial from their point of view. Because I may not be treated well in school. So they decided to send me to the next village to start my elementary school, which is more than 2 hours walk each day. Each morning, I got up at 7:30 am and arrived at school around 8:15 am, it took me about 45 minutes one way as it was downhill. After school, I went uphill, and took me about 1.5 hours to go home. I did lots of hiking and walking when I was young. That may explain why I am far above the average height of a Southwestern resident in China.?

When I was a 4th grader, my parent made another big decision to send my sister and me to my aunt’s village. It is 15 mins from the town and has a better school in her village compared with my current school. My aunt is such a kind, Chinese woman. She took good care of us. My uncle is just okay, he is not a mean man, but I have three cousins. My uncle treated my sister and me okay, but not as well as his sons for sure. I didn’t know what’s the agreement between my parent with my aunt. But the plan I knew was each month, My sister and I would walk 3 to 4 hours one way home to get food such as rice, photos, and various vegetables to my aunt’s home. Meanwhile, my sister and I did all the chores that most of the kids did in the family. My three cousins and I were always the ones to try all the boys’ tricks to skip the chores, and my sister was the one who did the most. She is a very nice and responsible girl.

After living with my aunt for about 3 years, my parent saved enough money to buy a small property to build a house in the town. It was just the beginning China just started Economic Reform and Open Policy after Deng Xiaoping was selected as the new National Leader. My sister and I moved to the town to live with my mom while my father still stays in my hometown because he has a small clinic in the village, where people normally call him “Doctor Tan” or “Barefoot Doctor.”

Suddenly I lived around the people who are called “Town Residents”. And I was overwhelmed as a teen and did not know what was going to happen in my town life. I did not have any friends when I moved to the town. Most of the people who live in my neighborhood are teachers or officers who work for the government. I felt I was different for the first time in my life. I was called “hick” when I visited the town in the past with my dad. I know that years later in the United States it is called discrimination.?

Thankfully, my mom is such a talented and high-EQ Chinese woman, we got along very well with the neighbors. My mom is the nicest and most hospitable person on the street. She turned our house into a gathering spot for people after dinner or during leisure hours. I got along okay with most of the kids but not all of them. I did not like those “spoiled kids” who lived in the town and were not strong or brave enough to be men! Years later, I found out it was because of my jealousy that they had a much better life than me by that time. They have more toys, books, and nice clothes. Meanwhile, they had that sort of superiority in nature because they were born and grew up in the town, while I came from a village.

Two brothers lived across the street, their father was a guy who worked as a high-ranking officer. I did not get along with them well. Sometimes, we played with each other, but most of the time we did not get along with each other.?One time, I had a bad fight with them for something I did not remember at all. We had a terrible fight near the river where we lived. I beat them both badly and put the big brother’s head into the sand and this scared the little brother away to call his mom’s help.

No surprise, I was slapped by my mom badly afterward, and asked me to apologize to the boy and his parent. There were more penalties that I did not remember because this happened to me so many times in my teens.

My parents’ goal was to ensure my sister and I could land a job in the government after we grew up. As such, we do not need to do the farmer job anymore and get rid of villager life and titled be a hick. My father is a person who considers education to be the highest rank for anything in the world. He keeps saying that a man of knowledge is superior to others. He keeps instilling this mindset in me whenever he has a chance with me.

As I am getting more mature and getting over the teenage challenge, I am getting to understand more about my parents’ expectations. Glory to my family and make them proud of me. I studied harder to meet that expectation, but I was still a B-level student. I was never in the sweet spot of any teachers in school. I was average, sometimes, I might get an A-, but most of the time, I was a B student.

I didn’t enjoy in the school taking the exams weekly or monthly. But most of my time in school, I was happy. And I survived anyway. After middle school, I had a choice to go to high school or go to Technical Secondary School. I was desperate to finish school to go to Technical Secondary School so I could start working 4 years later to earn money in the real world. Unfortunately, I am not an A student. Back in the early nineteen-nineties in a small town in China, only the best student could go to the Technical Second School. High school is the second choice for most of the A students. Ironically, I went to the best high school in the county because I am fifty more points away from the Technical Second School acceptable criteria. The A+ and the best classmates in my middle school all went to Technical Second School.

My father is such a forward-looking and wise man. He thought this was the best path for me to continue high school so I could be a college student one day. And be the very first college student in our village. What’s an ambitious goal!?My naughty nature always made me trouble in school, my first year in high school, I made a terrible mistake and was caught by my teacher. I was asked to have a “parent–teacher” conversation. I was scared to death that I could be expelled from school. Fortunately, my father and the teacher had a good talk, and I continued to stay in the school.

It was such a tough competition to pass Chinese Gaokao (The exam to grant students to go to College). There is a phrase in Chinese to describe the toughness of Gaokao: “Hundreds of thousand warriors across a single plank bridge at the same time.” For a student like me, it is even harder. Regardless of how hard I studied, I was still behind those students who graduated from the big towns, and counties. I just feel I am not smart enough to compete with those guys. A simple example is I cannot do my Literate and Language correctly. In my 3 years in high school, I was not a single time be asked by the teacher to stand up to read aloud the textbook in front of the class; because I could not pronounce Mandarin correctly. 90% of this privilege was given to those students from local towns and counties. That is funny after years I came to the United States, and I am an authentic Mandarin speaker.??

Nevertheless, I made progress gradually and kept myself in the B range. I was good at English (from how to score a high score perspective) and Chemical. We had about 70 students in my class, I ranked between 20th to 30th in the most time on exams. Sometimes, I did slightly better to advance to the 15th. Based on school historical data, I am at the edge of either passing the college exam or failing. In the past 10 years, on average there were about 15 to 20 students can go to college each year.

?I did not do well in the Gaokao exam in 1996. I even did worse than what I normally did in the preparation phase. I was desperate and was very disappointed in myself. I just feel I let my parent down after so many years. On the day I went to school to get my result, I decided not to go home because I didn’t want to see my parent’s disappointment. For the first time, I decided to do something by myself. I took a bus to go with one of my classmates since he needed to visit his relative in another country. I planned to take the coach from there to Shenzhen to explore my uncertain future in 1996. In my high school years, I keep hearing about the excitement in Shenzhen, the Economic Reform and Open Policy in Guangzhou, China. Lots of people got rich and made lots of money. It attracted me to explore the opportunities and dream of being a rich guy after years of glory, my family.

I stayed in my classmate’s relative home for one night before taking the next morning coach. I think I had some 20 dollars in my pocket. On that night, it was the “The King of Soccer” – Maradona visited China to play against the Chinese National Soccer Team. Everyone was excited to watch the game in front of the National TV. I had no mood to watch, and I could not go to sleep either. It was the night I was struggling with my future and what’s the next steps I should take in my life.

I did not remember what made me change my mind. The next morning, I told my friend, I needed to go home and thanked his relative for allowing me to stay one night. I did not know if it was because I was scared to go to Shenzhen by myself, or if I thought I should not go away like a coward.

I went home and told my parent I did not get into college. It was clear they were disappointed, but they did not blame me as much as I thought. They just said let’s study harder for one more year. That summer, I did not go anywhere and stayed home to go over all the books and exams I had done before. 2 months later, I enrolled in the class called “Return Class”. It is a group of students who failed the college exam and decided to do one more year to take next year's exam. Years later, I know Jack Ma failed his Gaokao three times, and he is the richest person in China now and one of the richest people in the world.

It was a tough and heavy-lift year. I studied days and nights. We even studied as a group in after the lights were off in the classroom and lit up candles till the middle night. I was the top student in the “reattending class” pool. My "reattending " year was tough, but I had a good experience and lots of good memories that I still remember for the rest of my life.?

In 1997 summer, Hong Kong returned to China from the United Kingdom. I took the Gaokao exam again. This time, I successfully passed and was accepted by a college in Northeastern China. It is thousands of miles away from my hometown. But I was happy to finish my mission this time. Though the college is not counted as a top-ranking national-wide, I did not care. I was happy to finish what my parent put on my shoulder. I did not let them down. I became the first college student in the village and made them proud of me. Glory to the family!

The journey just gets started!

To be continued...