Armed with dozens of kilograms of research materials, Liu arrived at the Peking University (Beida in Chinese pinyin form) in March 1996, beginning his academic career as an unregistered student at the prestigious university, which has long been considered an "ivory tower" by Chinese students and scholars for its intense academic atmosphere.

Today a group of associate students like Liu gather at the Weiming Lake, a landmark and symbol of Beida.

As unregistered students, they attend classes and lectures and eat in the students' cafeterias. Every now and then they exchange views and discuss questions with teachers and students in the university.

These unregistered students who linger in the "ivory tower" call themselves " Beida's wanderers".

Liu Zhe said he had read My World and I, an autobiography of famous writer Cao Juren, when Liu was a middle-school student. "The book had an effect on my life for the next decade," Liu said.

Liu worked as a researcher with the Cao Juren Archives Office at a library in his hometown after he finished high school. Although he found the work interesting, he felt his academic background was inadequate for an advanced level of research, especially with only limited local materials. He thus decided to attend Beida for further study.

After several years at Beida, Liu believes he has finally made a breakthrough in his research.

"I eventually made significant progress in my research on Cao Juren on the basis of the knowledge I 'stole' from the university," Liu said. To date, he has published scores of articles on Cao.

With Liu's support, a Cao Juren Research Society was founded in Beijing in March 2000.

Nobody knows exactly how many "Beida's wanderers" there are, however, a significant number, like Liu, are conducting their studies in pursuit of their dreams.

Zhou Hongling, who left his job at a commercial bank in Xingtai,in north China's Hebei Province in 1994, is another example.

"Since the late 1970s, I have been studying the problem of social transformation in China," Zhou said.

"It is Beida that sparked the cultural enlightenment movement of 1919. I thus chose this university as the place where I might find a way to achieve democracy in modern Chinese society," he said.

Zhou, together with other "Beida's wanderers", are in search ofthe path and objectives of China's social reform and, after years of efforts, he and his partners have come up with a new theory.

They established the Beijing Xinmin Research Center for Education in January 2002 and tried to put their theory into practice. Seven months later, they organized a direct election in a neighborhood committee in the city, a sort of grassroots self-governing management and service organization for urban residents.

The election was praised by some specialists as China's first real direct democratic election.

Bian Yunshan used to be a doctor in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. "The work at the hospital bored me, and I thus decided to quit and came to Beida's Chinese Language and Literature Department as an unregistered student due to my great love for literature," he said.

"Now I live a more unstable life, yet I still consider the career in letters a wise choice," said Bian, who has published four novels.

Difficulty in making ends meet is the unromantic aspect of the lives of "Beida's wanderers".

Liu Zhe lived for a while in an abandoned shed on Beida's campus a few years back, and Zhou Hongling survived a period of severe poverty in his early days at the university.

Professor Chen Pingyuan with Beida's Chinese Language and Literature Department followed the lives of the wanderers for sometime.

Beida has a tradition of allowing unregistered students to attend lectures at the university, according to Chen.

In its 100-year history, Beida's wanderers saw two "golden" periods. The first was in the 1920s and 1930s, and the second from the 1980s up to the present day, Chen noted.

The phasing-out of household registration system, coupled with a more tolerant social environment in China, account for the resurgence of the unregistered students, said Professor Lin Bin with the university's Sociology Department.

(People’s Daily April 28, 2003)