“Zhilaoshi”(created by students, translated to Teacher Zhi), whose real name is Zhichao Shan, is a math teacher in BDFZ and famous for his talent of math and enthusiasm to people.

Childhood

On 4th September,1985, Zhichao Shan was born in Chaoyang, Liaoning province. He lived in a harmonious family with his parents and grandparents. Although his family was poor, his childhood was happy.

When he was at the age for primary school, Shan went to a school near by his home. There were 6 grades in the school. Each grade contained 5 single classes, and there were about 66 students in the class which he belonged to. Some of the students were not friendly. Older students had often robbed food from younger students and fought with each other. His headteacher preferred to take more care of those whose families were wealthy and powerful, and often physically punished students according to her will. The society there was terrible. When Shan was young, he was talented in math. ‘I could tell you the Chinese Zodiac if I knew your age, although I didn’t understand number theory at all then. ’ Shan recalled. ‘I could also calculate very fast. I calculated by mind while my grandfather was using an abacus. Still I was faster than him. I could finish many calculating problems within one minute but they were required to be done in three minutes.’ Shan was good at all the subjects in primary school. He felt easy to memorize all the facts in textbooks, but writing was always his weak point. His hobby was to read magazines and other interesting books.

Later he became a junior school student. He kept his perfect performance, and teachers started to like him. Also other students flattered him or became jealousy. He was satisfied by being praised. Finally he got a brilliant score in Senior High School Entrance Examination (SHSEE, for short), although Chinese and English were always his weak subjects.

At that time in Chaoyang, students ranked in top 720 in SHSEE were designated to one of the top two high schools. Those students who had odd rankings would be designated to one school, while those who had even rankings designated to the other, without freedom of choice. Shan was designated to No.2 Senior School, Chaoyang. Shan was always good at studying and taking exams, often his score was 150 higher or even more than the second student, while the total score was 1050. Besides math, he was also interested in politics and history. He believed all the things written in textbooks without any doubt. He had none contact with the real society. He studied hard and prepared for College Entrance Examination. Although Chinese and English were his weak subjects, still he was able to be enrolled by Peking University.

In college

After College Entrance Examination, Shan was enrolled by Peking University. His major was math. Before entering the university, Shan had only one experience to leave his hometown: going to Shenyang to attend Chemistry Competition. Even so, he spent all his college time in campus and almost visited nowhere in Beijing. He feels regretted that he has lost the chance to know society outside the campus. The math courses in college became much harder than high school, and most students felt frustrated in some sense. Shan couldn’t understand the teaching, also because most professors wouldn’t pay enough attention to the courses. But he studied hard after class by himself, and got very high scores. Whatever, Shan was always good at taking exams.

After finishing the bachelor's degree from Peking University, he pursued a PhD’s degree in the same university. In 2009, he went to Microsoft Redmond, trying to collaborate with a famous professor. Shan had strong beliefs in Communism over the years before he went to America, and worshiped Chairman Mao. In the laboratory of Microsoft, he hung a Chinese national flag on the door of the office. A Hungarian saw that and started to abuse Communism and made personal attacks on Shan’s character continually. Shan felt great pain from these abuses,  but he also began to realize that there was something wrong with his belief. At the same time, Shan’s talent in math was being questioned, to the extent that he even had trouble getting the doctor’s degree. “I was very depressed, and had even considered suicide.” Shan recalled. Then he came back to China without having any research results. His parents who had hoped Shan would have  great success were very disappointed about Shan’s back. He suffered from deep depression for a long time, and the Department asked some people to take care of him to prevent him from committing suicide. It was a very hard time in his life. Fortunately, finally he succeeded in getting the doctor’s degree.

Now

In 2012, Shan came into the Affiliated High School of Peking University and became a math teacher. Because he realized the dark side of teachers in Chaoyang, he decided to be a good teacher to change this situation starting with himself. He stuck to his choice in spite of opposition from his parents as people in the small city thought it was humiliating for a doctor in Peking University to become a high school teacher.

When he arrived at BDFZ, he joined Yuanpei College directly. However, he was still extremely depressed at that time. At the end of the first semester, his comment from students was the last one in the whole school, so he was asked to talk with one headmaster and in danger of dismissal. In the second semester, only 5 students chose his class. Nevertheless, in the following 3 years, he tried his best to improve his own condition by taking medicine and studied better ways to teach students. In the last year, his classes began to be popular and the condition is much better right now. Also all the students call him “Zhilaoshi” because there is another teacher who has the same surname "Shan" teaching geography.

“Zhilaoshi” has the will to have some contributions to the society. Teacher as he is, he already has some contributions. Now he goes about writing a math textbook in senior high school and plans to finish it in 2 years. Because of his disappointment of society 5 years ago, he still feels hard to trust others now, so he spends most of his spare time reading books.

He says if he has a child in future, he would trust the education in Beijing. Talking about which period of time he would go back to if he had a chance to start a new life, “Zhilaoshi” says he would go back to the age of 18 and might still choose a math major based on his love of math and concern of Chinese education.

"Zhilaoshi" evaluates himself as explicit, impulsive and compulsive. However, in some students’ eyes, he has the genuine love of math which most students lack now. He is also enthusiastic to people around him and that’s why many students like him.

Written by Yuting Xie, Guo Chen, Yuan Zhao, revised by Zhichao Shan