Huang Ran, MK (Oriel, 2007 - )

The origin of MK

Right in front of you is a brief life chart of a Chinese young man who has just embarked upon his new journey to Oriel College, Oxford University under the halo as another Paterson Scholar. I am Huang Ran and you can call me MK. Here is my story.

About me

First I think I should give a little explanation of my Chinese name: the surname "Huang" means color yellow in Chinese, and more importance lies with the given name "Ran", which means natural and also contains my father's expectation of me - live free from any utilitarian constraint but according my own will and dreams.

This is exactly how I spent the 22 years of my life so far, just like little Topsy portrayed in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin", I just "grew" and don't think I was made according to someone else's plan.

This is probably the major difference between me and other Paterson Scholars that I did not deliberately plan my life, aiming at a specific goal. Somehow, call it luck if you want, this flexibility and diversity have helped me seize most opportunities which have arisen in my life so far and some of which are so huge that they could literally change my life, just like this one given by Mr. Paterson.

Here, instead of repeating my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Paterson for their generous support (since I seriously doubt that I can make any breakthrough in doing so after having read the essays of previous Paterson scholars), I'd like to consider this scholarship as both a kind gift and an investment with serious consideration. Graduated from medical school, Mr. Paterson turned out to be an excellent banker in private equity, and thus my boldest speculation is that our appreciation of his donation will not be the major "output" that Prof. Paterson (yes, he is also making academic achievement himself!) would like to see. Instead, he would be much happier to observe that we can "cash-in" our promise for our people and our own potentials after accepting his cheques, and for me, his trust in each and every one of us and his relentless effort to cultivate legal talents for China are beyond the measure of money and should permanently inspire us. Also, as scholars, we are bound to contribute to the development of China not only academically. Utilizing my full capacities and finding my personal niche to give back to the community may be a more practical and more effective way to realize my value and come up to meet Mr. Paterson's expectation.

In the following paragraphs, I shall present what is important in my view, not so much as who I am but where I came from, for this can most faithfully reflect my "origin".

Childhood

I grew up in the city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province where Chairman Mao came from and where people are addicted to spicy food and have a collective characteristic even hotter than any spiciest pepper. But when I was small, my family lived in the suburban area, on the college campus where my parents then worked. What a wonder place I was living in: in this area, it was common to see cranes flying from rice field and hares rushing to caves in their spinneys; I often met my classmates in the primary school twice a day, once was at school, and the other was when I went to the market with my parents where they were selling home-raised vegetables or fish or other groceries with their parents. We got discount all the time. Back then, there was no eco-crisis, no traffic jam, and no food safety issues. In front of our flat and in the back yard there were two small pieces of land where I used to plant peanuts and my parents planted anonymous but very tasty potherbs.

On the campus where I lived, there were only flats except for one outstandingly "tall" building which was constituted with 3 floors. At lunch time, our neighbours would walk out of their houses with bowls of rice in their hands and eat together outdoors, sharing thoughts, jokes, every bit of success of their children as well as exchanging varied styles of home cooking. We all knew which family made the best pickle and which family was so rich that they could eat chicken twice a week. Not a very good eating habit I know, but definitely most harmonious dining atmosphere I have experienced in my life so far!

In fact life back then was harmonious and chill in almost aspects, at least from my viewpoint as a kid, except for the those various competitions among children which heated and encouraged by their parents: every kid was practicing some sort of musical instrument or calligraphy or sports and we were elites at school even in the whole suburban education system. I can't say how much we enjoyed those intense "training" sessions, but we really are appreciative of them now: one of my friends has won the International Olympic Physics Gold Medal in high school and is now studying in UC Berkeley. Quite a few others are spread among some most prestigious universities in China and abroad. But deep down in our hearts, we are still a crew of suburban kids who are less posh than urban kids but tougher and smarter!

Compared with the younger generation today, we are luckier that we did have some discretionary space: yes, we were pushed to learn something but we could choose what speciality we wanted to learn whereas nowadays the competition is so furious and so early that some extra-curricular activities (i.e. English, piano) now seems compulsory; we also have a larger liberty of developing our own personality, unlike the young people today who are so widely exposed to globalization and mainstream culture manipulation that teenagers all over the world share the same fashion, same icons and same interests. How to preserve personal uniqueness and moreover the uniqueness of local culture and tradition is really an issue not only for parents but also for all of us. Well, not to be too carried away, I shall say here: Adieu, au revoir and so long, my childhood!

My School days in China

For me, the higher the level of education I step into, the closer I am to the reality of our society. Ever since I moved into the heart of Changsha city with my parents when I was 11, I was aware that school, despite different names and levels, is much less sophisticated but nowhere near the ivory tower. Actually, I have never been proud of being a city-dweller nor do I take any pride in not being living in the countryside which is the normal position in China. When I transferred to the one of the best primary school in the city in my 6th grade, I was still immature and sucked in sports, never played video games and wore clothes in an anti-urban style. Somehow, I left a pretty strong impression on my classmates and my head teacher who said: in my 40 years teaching experience, there has never been a pupil who transferred from a suburban school and got into the top 5 students in the class within just one semester! Whether or not I had studied extra hard to earn more respect from my classmates and teachers, I cannot remember now. However I do know that genuine respect is not from where you come, not who your parents are, not what you wear or what you can afford, but simply comes within who you are and what you do.

I walked one step closer to the society in my junior middle school, where students were raised in totally different backgrounds, where fights and quarrels with teachers in the classroom constantly happened and where some students even allegedly took marijuana. Despite the fact that two of my friends from the same class are currently in prison for robbery and assault, I managed to keep a high academic standard myself and got myself in one of the top high schools in China. In the entrance exam I was ranked in the top 100 students in the city; however, this failed to make my top 3 accomplishments during that period. Those 3 are: did not get the habit of smoking (and still a non-smoker now); started playing basketball and being on track to learn English. The first accomplishment's impact on me is immense and how many years longer I will live by not smoking is still to be determined; and the latter two really benefited me substantially, both entertainingly and pragmatically. Miss Tang, my English teacher is a marvellous woman who really knows the "button" of a language to use. She compelled us to recite the text, to listen to the tape as carefully as we could even we are snoring in bed and she inserted a lot of English role plays and recording of your own pronunciation into her teaching. As a result, learning English, which is the No.1 horror for most Chinese students at all levels, is simple for me as I treat it no more than a daily tool and no less than an important medium to know the world. Compared with Miss Tang, my first basketball teacher was far away from a good fellow as he would often generously leave on your face with the print of his lovely big hand after a dreadful game. But the game of basketball is so much fun: you do your own job and you also coordinate with your teammates, you play physically and also play psychologically, it is perfect to show off your muscle or your wisdom or both and it helped me to develop my strong sense of competitiveness.

Anyway, let's get back to my fancy high school, one facet solely can reflect the whole image i.e. its alumni. Chairman Mao, Former Prime Minister Zhu Rong Ji (the second beloved PM besides Zhou En Lai), the Academy Award winner of the best achievement in music with motion pictures Tan Dun (you may not be familiar with the name, but does the movie "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" ring any bells) and many others. Like I said, this level of my education gave me a further understanding of the society outside: students were still from all layers of the society but with a much stronger personalities and specialties. To be well-known throughout (never to be my ambition) my high school, you need to be either an academic tycoon or a semi-professional student musician or a really good student athlete or having a really loud motorcycle or well-connected¡K also, the teaching there was no longer spoon-fed: there were the best teachers in the province eager to answer your every question, but if you choose to waste your talent, they would not bother to waste too much passion on you. As for me, the lack of self-control determined that I was no longer a member of the top 50 students in our grade, and truth be told, I used to sit in the seat No. 1 from the bottom in one major exam given that I missed the exam last time for a basketball game. But I am so sure that I have gained as much pleasure as the very best students of my grade in learning. The Chinese lessons attracted me with traditional culture, linguistic feature and masterpiece from other countries and other times, and the same applied for other subjects such as physics, biology, history¡K well politics taught in high school was boring, but some fundamental methodology and reasoning are still serving me well even today.

A large amount of time was allocated to sports, mainly basketball - we were the champion of our province and one of my teammate is now playing for the national team. This traditional sense of honour made us a strong team, and by the end of my high school I finally secured my starting position in the team and qualified as the Second Level Athlete afterwards. My achievement in basketball also impressed the China University of Political science and Law and helped a lot with my college admission. English continued to play an important part in my life and almost single-handedly sent me abroad twice, once for summer school in Cambridge (my father had some pleasant experiences overseas, he and my mother both agreed to pay that large sum of money in order to "enlighten" me) and the other being the only flag-bearer of Hunan province to lead the Chinese team to their first appearance in the final circle of the World Cup in South Korea. In that event, thousands of Chinese fans had almost turned the stadium into the home-field but we still lost the game - a long way to go to earn respect in football.

High school ended suddenly and then 3 months later I found myself a freshman 990 miles away from home and settled, again, in the outskirts of Beijing. Studying in the CUPL was no longer a step forward to the society, away from my parents' meticulous care and living in a campus where its wall did not mean much more than an ornament, I became a member of the society. CUPL is the most typical Chinese university, you could even treat it as a miniature of China where the resource and especially the allocation of its resource could never meet its demand. CUPL is the best-equipped law school in China with our learned and dedicated teachers and the largest law library in Asia. But when those were distributed to each law student respectively, CUPL becomes typical: students are often rejected from selecting certain classes because of the limitation of teaching capacity; during lectures, you can expect in a class room made for 200 students that there will be almost 400 with some of them sitting on corners and other carry their own chairs and sit right next to the lecturer; when exams approach, students have to wake up at 5 in the morning to fight for a seat in the library or study rooms, and when I say "fight" I practically suggest a application of force the same as you can picture from the UK's Offences Against the Person Act 1861¡K there is always too much you can complain about with CUPL and also too much you miss about it. For me personally, here is the place I started critically thinking about the status quo and future of our nation and our society, thinking about justice, thinking about life. Here is the place where I felt about the power of thinking and yet the stronger power of desire. Here is the place where I was thrilled by both charismas of personality and wickedness of personality. Also here is the place I met my first and so far the only sweetheart, now temporarily separated from me by the Atlantic Ocean. Here is the place I made my first bucket of gold by winning the bonus of English competitions. Here is the place where hundreds of people crying together and waving goodbye to the departing coaches full of classmates who they have spent 4 years together. My memories of CUPL are so strong that I can hardly put in a single personal story and describe it now but I will never doubt that CUPL has left an indelible mark on me and will be my burden and wealth for life.

About Oxford

This essay was scheduled for the beginning of this year and was delayed again and again for various reasons: enjoying the celebration (mainly drinking and crying and more drinking and crying) with college classmates of 4 years, enjoying the last summer vacation with the family (as I know that when I finish my studies and go to work, there will only be 20 days paid vacation per year). In this way, the essay has been deferred till I arrived in Oxford due to my tardiness.

What is Oxford like? Well, Oxford is Oxford and like nowhere else in the world. It sounds rude, arrogant but true. Oxford is where the 13th century is still a part of daily life , where Homeric epics meet bio-medical-engineering events, where there are college bars, where three is rowing on the Isis with mallards and swans, where there is one deadline after another, where one gets only 20 hours sleep a week , where crew dates usually happen, where one dresses in gown and suit for every supper , where there is the world's biggest library, the best professors and the best learning environment, where there is a unique tutorial system and only one other university has the same system whose name but I cannot remember.

Colorful as the life in Oxford is, busy is always its main theme, especially for international students, especially for law students, especially for students rowing in Oriel Novice Team-A, especially for students playing basketball for University Seconds and Oriel College Team. But actually I feel blessed to be busy like this, and my background makes me feel lucky for myself and for the students here where life does not necessarily mean struggle.

Thank you for reading my story and I hope that you valued my insights.

December 2007