Wang Zheng, normally a shy, good-looking boy, becomes animated and confident as soon as he is asked to talk about his favourite topic.

At 14, Wang has outgrown his age not only in stature (he is 1.81 metres tall), but in mental maturity. He has written a wuxia (martial arts) novel featuring sophisticated classical language. It has just been published by Huashan Publishing House.

In the past two decades, Chinese urban parents' preoccupation with the education of an only child has been phenomenal.

With the only child is attached the hopes and expectations of the entire family. Many parents think that to choose an alternative educational mode rather than the universally observed classroom-and-textbook pattern, is risky.

"Compared with my young contemporaries, I am privileged in that my family gives me great freedom in deciding what I want to learn and how to learn," said Wang.

At the age of 5, when other children were being taught Chinese characters from word cards, Wang spent his time listening to his father reading the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) classic Creation of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi) in classical Chinese.

"My father loves classical Chinese literature," Wang explains. "One day when I was 5, he decided to read Creation of the Gods again. So he read it and read it loud to me as a way to distract me from mischief."

However, Wang's father, Wang Dunhuang, did not know what he was reading would attract his son so much.

"He had to read it time and time again to me. Sometimes he got bored and tried to slyly skip some passages, but I would always detect it and ask him to read it.

"Some martial arts novels by Louis Cha (Jin Yong) were also first read to me by my father before I learned enough words to read them."

Then after attending school, while his schoolmates were occupied by extracurricular tutorials and all kinds of arts classes, he enjoyed himself reading a broad range of books, from the popular genres of martial arts, fantasy, and romance, to very serious subjects like literary theory, Western history, and classical poetry and prose.

"I have got to know the world more from miscellaneous extracurricular readings than from textbooks," said Wang.

"I have long found that some books, though not meant to be read by children, are more interesting and instructive than textbooks. For example, you can derive more knowledge and pleasure by reading Herbert George Wells' A Short History of the World than learning from textbooks."

As a third-grader in one of Beijing's top secondary schools, when most of his classmates were cramming hard, preparing themselves for the immediate entrance exams for high schools and the not very distant entrance tests for universities three years later, he split his time between studying and writing his novels.

His first novel, Flying Together (Shuangfei Lu), features martial arts, or Chinese kung fu.

"Wuxia fiction is considered a light and somehow insignificant genre. But I love it because it embraces many elements of traditional culture and it offers an imagined world for the dramatic conflict of human hearts," said Wang.

Granddad's influence

The way Wang Zheng intermingles a student's serious undertaking with light entertainment seems an interesting mirror image to the youth of his famous grandfather, Wang Shixiang.

A renowned scholar, connoisseur and collector of cultural relics and artifacts, Wang Shixiang is best known for his scholarly findings, which some consider trifling.

Well-bred to have a refined taste and skilled eye for classical Chinese culture, Wang the senior was nevertheless infatuated with folk arts and crafts when he was still a student at Beijing's Yenching University. He also indulged himself in games traditionally played by street people, like cricket-fighting, raising pigeons and training eagles.

Later, these passions and hobbies laid a solid foundation for his distinguished studies into a broad extent of traditional cultural legacies, ranging from the very classical and dainty, like Ming Dynasty furniture, to the very mundane, like the making of gourds for crickets.

"I have fooled away my youth in all kinds of trifling interests," Wang Shixiang, 90, once said.

But this is a typically Chinese way of showing modesty by self-depreciation rather than real repentance.

For now, when it comes to his only grandchild, the old man encourages his passions for all sorts of "unserious undertakings" as he himself once indulged such passions.

"I think we'd better let him grow freely and decide his life independently. My only demand to him is that he should pay enough attention to the study of English and classical Chinese," said Wang Shixiang.

Wang Zheng plans to keep his reading and writing habit through the rest of his middle schooling.

"My family believes that education should be geared not to cramming and passing exams, but to cultivate the ability of observing and making discoveries from things you really enjoy doing," said Wang Zheng.

Like many other teenagers who try to make an alternative choice to learning, Wang Zheng finds his maverick way of self-education runs against the highly standardized educational routine, though in this case, the conflict is comparatively mild.

"I would not choose extreme solutions like dropping out," said Wang Zheng, referring to the controversial decision made by Han Han, one of the representative teenage writers in China.

Han dropped out of high school after he failed to pass the exams of all seven courses except Chinese.

According to Wang, he has so far managed to catch up with his class by working hard in the month before a semester ends.

"I am sort of a high-efficient learner," said Wang. "And my wide-range reading in history, geography and literature helps me deal with these subjects. Besides, I don't dislike any particular subject, even mathematics interests me in some ways."

The problem is the rigid, standardized way of teaching and management.

"In our school, teaching is mostly a process of teachers giving knowledge and students taking notes. Nobody asks questions. You can imagine I am not very enthusiastic with such an uninspiring way of learning," he said.

But on the other hand, teachers are not enthusiastic with Wang's way of self-education.

"I often ask leave from the head teacher  of my class after I have stayed late into the night writing and reading. And believe me, though he does not interfere directly, I am under great pressure in doing so. For even if you can score well in exams, teachers don't encourage such behaviour because you make other students think twice when they are asked to obey the mechanical way of studying.

"And teachers believe that if you don't adapt yourself to the highly standardized educational mode, you would very likely have trouble passing the similarly standardized entrance exams of university. And if the admission rate for university falls in a teacher's class, he would be considered incompetent and under great pressure from the school authority and parents," Wang said.

"So you cannot blame anybody, it is the current practice to blame."

(China Daily December 27, 2004)