[TOC]

When I was young, my mother gave me a dream. Pointing to a picture of her older brother, she said to me, “This is my father’s student. He has been admitted to Tsinghua University. He is the pride of our middle school. When you grow up, you will go to Tsinghua University and bring honor to our family. I don’t know what Tsinghua is like, but I know the story of Edison and Newton. Tsinghua is probably the place where I can become them. I imagined in my early mind what I could do at Tsinghua… A smile came to my face. I said I want to realize this “Tsinghua dream”. This is the birth of tsinghua dream.

1. Little scientist

I believe everyone was as curious about the world as I was.

Lu Xun had his hundred grass garden, and I have my own “experimental field”. If lu Xun was an artist when I was young, THEN I was a scientist when I was young. So some people might say THAT I’m too loud, that I keep my mouth shut. However, in my dictionary, “artist” and “scientist” are not great people, they are just labels attached to people’s hearts. If a child focuses on his inner sense of the world, he is an artist. I’m not. Most of my interest is in understanding how the world works, even at any cost. Probably most boys are like that.

When I was young, I lived in a middle school taught by my parents. Two bungalows with a small plot of land at the door where my mother grew some vegetables. The three of us are poor, but we live a quiet and comfortable life. We lived in this place until junior high school. These houses record the explorations and experiments of a young scientist until they were razed to the ground.

My mother refused to let me have a cat or a dog. She said anyone who pooped would never get one – except me. So I loved the company of ants when I was young. I always try to understand the life of ants in various ways. I could watch ants come and go under my roof all day. Seeing them touch each other with their tentacles and then go their separate ways made me wonder what they were saying. I wonder if there’s a way to crack the code of ant language. I learned from the book that there is a queen ant in the ant cave and she has a big belly. To get a glimpse, I started trying to flood the mountain, pouring water into the ant hole. I sometimes do this for an afternoon and never once manage to see the queen. It turned out that the ants were such shrewd sewer engineers that most of the water had seeped into the ground. But I could not be reconciled, and I began to try other methods. Like putting a candy bar in the mouth of the cave. But the queen shelf is too big, after all, refused to come out, let others help her to send rice in.

It is said that the world will be destroyed either by madmen or by scientists. It would be terrible if there were only scientists in the world, for example, they would invent efficient killing weapons. I discovered that loose cotton would burn quickly, so I devised a gruesome holocaust experiment. I put sugar water droplets on the ground, such as the ants around the place when a flood, spread cotton, ignition…… I still shudder to think of those industrious little black heads turning to ashes. Will their spirits seek revenge on me? An upgraded version of the experiment used paper soaked in a chemical solution and burned on a gentle fire, which was slow and not lethal, to test the ants’ escape routes. I’ve also done psychological experiments with live ants. The plastic ruler was rubbed with a broken sock to generate static electricity and placed a short distance behind a walking ant. When the ant couldn’t move, I began to speculate about what it was thinking, what it was feeling. It might think there are aliens? But since the ruler was taken away and it carried on as if nothing had happened, I guessed it was more puzzled than alarmed. But after going back and forth a few times, it clearly seemed to strike and forgot what it was going to do. Later I found out that when ants are drawn to the plastic ruler, they are “fired” with the same electric charge, like human cannons. Note: the “Human cannon” is a powerful electromagnetic device that can fire people as cannonballs from the Japanese TV series “Dinosaur Exeter”.

A small discovery can lead to a great deal of exploration and experimentation. That was the way I was at that time. Although my mother also forced me to practice brush calligraphy, painting, and many awards, but I don’t like these things. I seem to have been born a scientist, not an artist, but maybe it was just my mother’s compulsion that turned me against art. Physics is my favorite, because it makes me know the secrets of the world. I generally school a few days before the experiment will pick out the physics book, painstakingly find materials to practice some, the in the mind. What fun it is to go to school!

2. Missed opportunity

In high school, my life changed gradually due to the pressure of schoolwork. In order to be admitted to Tsinghua University, I study hard. Leave behind my brush calligraphy, the ants, batteries and coils I use to do experiments, and everything except exam subjects. In the eyes of the teacher I am an obedient good student, in the eyes of the mother I am an obedient good boy. Get up on time every morning, eat a big bowl of noodles made by my mother (in order to supplement the physical strength needed for the whole morning’s study), and then rush into the classroom, according to the preset program began to read, do exercises. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. But……

Suddenly one day I found that all my activities were carried out on paper, reading books and doing exercises. The exam papers and review books had made me numb. I guess I won’t be like Edison or Newton anymore. So I began to be naughty. I have to work not only on the exam questions, but also on the more difficult ones. I did the physics Olympics, and then I wanted to read the physics books in college, and then I wanted to revive my childhood interest in experiments. The teacher is often bothered by me to ask some irrelevant questions when tutoring, which is actually the problem I found in the experiment. Finally, one day, when I asked him to cooperate with me in making a maglev top, he showed impatience. “Wang Yin, would you please let me answer other students’ questions first? Your questions are not good for the test.” I was stunned, and the man who inspired me to fall in love with physics said this to me. Later thought, he is helpless ah, but I do not want to ask him any “superclass” questions.

When I was in the second year of high school, my mother took back a previous college entrance examination for me to do, and I got a result that could be admitted to Tsinghua University at that time. I think in my heart, TSINGHUA I come. This time next year, I’ll have my acceptance letter! From then on, I no longer put the college entrance examination in the eye. I began to delve into more and more difficult subjects, conducting more and more outrageous experiments. I think tsinghua university should be filled with students like me, I will have a lot of like-minded friends, no longer with this group of nerds can only do exercises together.

But my behavior is always suppressed by the teacher, they want to turn us into a test machine. They told me that only by sinking into the exercises can I be sure of taking the exam. My mother also helped the teacher to persuade me. Look, class one’s math score is higher than you in the simulation exam. Try harder. I don’t care about grades. I can solve harder problems, problems that teachers can’t solve. I began to have a reverse psychology, began to lazy bed in the morning, pretending to be sick leave to go to class. The head teacher and the principal talked to me many times, saying that I had to settle down and prepare for the exam. But I did not listen to it, I despise the college entrance examination, think they are not qualified to set questions to test me. And then I had a mental illness, maybe OBSessive-compulsive disorder. When the language of the college entrance examination, I even suspected that the invigilator thought he was cheating, and then seemed really afraid of being caught, his hands trembled and his head was sweating. Then I think if the exam is not good, the previous excellent will be suspected? Do they think I cheated on all my previous grades? The hand shook even more. At this time, the invigilator may have found my situation, really walked over, standing behind me. I was afraid to write a word for several minutes because my hands were completely out of control. But he walked away, and the dreaded exam was finally over.

We filled in the application form before the exam. I just filled in Tsinghua university without considering other schools. Later my mother studied it and helped me add a tianjin University in the second volunteer. All the following applications are blank. We think I am really bold, but my psychological state let me play completely abnormal, than tsinghua’s lowest score line is still two points. In particular, Chinese scored 96. The first choice of Tianjin University did not accept me. Once a good student, unexpectedly to fail the end. Am I really that good? I asked myself. I’m too proud to be in this situation. I began to wonder whether I should be so contemptuous of the gaokao. Looking at my father’s scowl, my mother’s chatter, it’s worse than death. The answer is read? That would be a continuation of the nightmare. I can’t stay in this school any longer. Facing the questions, my mental illness will make me commit suicide. It happened that Sichuan University recruited students with high scores and failed in the exam, and gave me the chance to choose my major at will. Mom said, computer is very hot now, out to find a job. Although I am not interested in work, but I prefer to write programs, so I entered the Sichuan university computer department.

3. Failed to drop out twice

Can not say that entering Sichuan University is a good choice among no options. College life is more free, at least I will not take the road of suicide. But my problems continued, and I was never satisfied with what I could learn in school. The teacher basically read from the book, I gradually no longer satisfied with this kind of knowledge indoctrinated education. I don’t think there’s any point in going to college.

I can’t stand the environment of Sichuan University. During the military training, I was fed up with the grievances of my classmates and instructors, so I wanted to drop out. Our military training is in a heavily guarded artillery base, the heart of the pain to who ah! One day, as we were marching along the road, I saw a woman approaching with an officer on her arm. That officer’s wife looks just like my mother! If only mother came to me! Unexpectedly back to the camp, the commander (originally a company commander, we came to military training he was promoted to do commander) said that someone came to visit. I walked over and it was mom! Because she heard that I wanted to drop out, she hurried to the school to inquire about the place of military training, several twists and turns ran over, is the officer with her to infiltrate. I think my mom would have made a great career as a spy. She said she had helped me do a drop out of school, the school agreed, go back to review, ready to be admitted to Tsinghua…… “Review well, review well”… I pictured my senior year again, with an even more useless group of repeat students. After a sharp pain in my brain, I said, “Mom, I don’t want to quit school.”

But the military training back to school, found the dormitory so bad, I want to quit school. My mother came to help me deal with the formalities, but as a result I went back on my word because of cowardice. The teacher that causes the school to handle affairs all scold me: “you this person simply mental derangement!” Yeah, I’m sick, but I’m a psychopath, not a psycho. I hate my high school, I hate my university, I hate the college entrance examination, I hate China’s education! You guys made me sick. But, mother, she has worked so hard for me. I can’t do this anymore. I work hard in school and prepare to be admitted to Tsinghua graduate school.

The housing conditions were terrible and after a lot of trouble, I finally decided to rent a house off campus. Then I started to play skateboard, it made me brave. I gradually calmed down and could read by heart. After my sophomore year, my study life gradually returned to normal and my confidence began to recover.

4. Dream revival

I remember the teacher who taught Pascal in Sichuan University said to us in the first class: “Our school is backward. Companies out there are using C and C++, and we’re teaching Pascal. You later want to go out to work I’m afraid or learn VC what.” So some students began to pick up a series of books like “XXX Bible” and so on to learn, math class is also reading these things. I was ashamed of myself. Oneself is primary school of time played once study machine, can say to do not have any computer foundation. Counselors often praise them for their strong hands-on ability, and the company will need such people in the future. Their export is Bill Gates, the richest man in the world. During military training, I listened to what they said about DOS, Wen 95, and I had to open my mouth in admiration. Then I remembered my high school computer competition when a question about DOS command failed, now listen to them to know that DOS is an “operating system”. What’s the operating system? They say every computer has to have an operating system… I’m so ashamed of myself!

I came across Linux by accident when I decided to pluck up the courage to follow and pick up a complete DOS book and start from scratch. Later, I got to know Knuth because of The Art of Computer Programming. I just found that those things that the class spoke so low, some things to learn on the outdated, learn it why? I’m not far behind the others. I kept thinking, what is computer science? What makes us in the computer science department different from other departments? I sometimes think I have the answer, but then I disprove it. In the confusion of my thoughts, I found myself gradually breaking away from others’ standards. I didn’t want to take the COMPUTER rank examination like everyone else, and I didn’t care about Microsoft certification. I learned Linux myself, and I knew a lot of computer languages that no one else had heard of at the time. I learned LaTeX and got two checks for spotting mistakes in Knuth’s book. Class or escape, secretly with a large “dragon book” such as the original English books to chew. Or I printed out some of the GNU materials, do not listen to the teacher. At the end of the term, I did not go when I drew the key points, but I was always able to take an exam of eighty or ninety percent. There were always several girls ranked above me. But I don’t care about grades. Tests and grades don’t judge me anymore. My classmates probably thought I was a weirdo, until I heard about it after graduation. They called me “weirdo.” I was studying so hard, I was deaf to anything else. I have only one goal, which is to leave this hellhole after graduation and enter Tsinghua University for graduate study. Although people don’t understand what I’m doing, the teachers at Tsinghua should care about what I’m learning.

What I didn’t realize was that as I hit the books, my creativity was slipping away from me. When I blindly accept what I consider advanced material, I lose my own creation. I became a slightly better technical worker than others, no longer in the same class as Edison and Newton. The creativity I was trying so hard to preserve in high school had died under the strain of studying. I became sequential, trying to read from beginning to end. The goal of my high school teachers, the goal of Chinese education, was almost achieved.

Tsinghua university, here I come

In the summer vacation of my junior year, I came to Tsinghua university to get some materials for the postgraduate entrance examination. This is the place in my dream ah, beautiful campus, than Sichuan university to go up a lot of times, feet are pain to go to the hostel. I went to the department. One of the clerks was very rude and gave me a document. Well, a good school makes a good man. Suck it up. I wish I could get in.

Later, I heard a teacher say that there is a kind of student in Tsinghua called “straight bo”, who can continue to study for master and doctoral degrees and get a doctor’s degree in five years. As long as you pass the interview, you can come in to study. I thought this is a good way, I hate the most in my life is the exam. Out of the college entrance examination of those people, they have what qualifications test me! Postgraduate entrance examination data also fly everywhere. Wrote a few review material to call oneself what “generation master teacher”, I most despise this kind of person, will make money. If I can get a spot on the direct blog, I can get rid of them forever. Think about it, three years for a master’s degree, three years for a doctor’s degree, six years. It’s great that you can get your PhD in five years with no exams. But what qualifications do I have to get tsinghua direct bo? I have never heard of such a thing in Sichuan University.

So I started calling teachers and talking to them. In the face of their eyebrows, in the face of their smiling faces but helpless to say “no quota”, I feel no hope. One academician even said to me, “What kind of school is Sichuan University? It’s not even second rate. It’s third rate at best. How can you come to me!” I was devastated, but I didn’t give up. Finally I found a teacher and we hit it off right from the start. He heard that I was in contact with Knuth, and he was very happy and said, oh, I know him, we did a presentation here years ago. I finally felt I had found my soul mate, so I decided to learn from him. After the teacher had found a good interview, other teachers participated in the interview, I said that they did not seem to listen carefully, on the only focus on my test results that I do not care about things. I wore the MMIX T-shirt Knuth gave me for the interview. They probably didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t mention it.

However, the teacher only put forward a question on my PE results, said you how only more than 80 points? Is your body up to the heavy learning task? I answered with a smile, I still run 5000 meters every day, our school scores are more strict, do tsinghua students all test 90 sports? The interview passed.

6. Recommendation letters and farewell parties

After passing the interview, there are some formalities to go through when you go back to school. Transcripts, recommendation letters, and so on, with the application of foreign university graduate school, let me feel quite formal. The dean was kind to me and agreed to sign my letter of recommendation. But when he had signed it, he said to me, “Don’t think they think you’re a genius. They can’t hire anyone! Students like you have gone abroad, and the rest are the worst. Who wants a PhD? Don’t be too happy.” I laughed at the sudden shock, but kept defending my choice in my mind. Tsinghua university must be good and will not let me down. It’s my dream.

After a lot of trouble, I finally got the admission notice of my dream university and was able to leave sichuan University. At the farewell party after graduation, I saw everyone getting drunk and some people were yelling that they didn’t even get a diploma from Sichuan University. I silently imagined the coming happy life in Tsinghua university and felt glad.

At the end of the farewell party, I was surprised to see a classmate who was not familiar with me coming over with a glass of beer. I’m nervous. I hate it when someone toasts me. It’s polite, but it’s hypocritical. Unexpectedly, he said, “HERE’s a toast to you, big bull. I heard that you have been admitted to Tsinghua University as a doctor. I’ll do it, do as you please.” I don’t know how to reply. I never know how to take a compliment. It’s a good thing he didn’t ask me to drink too, which was respectful. “I know what kind of person you are,” he said. I admire you. You really like research. But I have to tell you, tsinghua people are not much better than us. Most of them just want to get a degree and get a good job. There aren’t many people you can study with. You’ll be lonely. I’m surprised someone like you doesn’t go abroad! You’ll be sorry.”

I’m a little upset. What is your reaction when a person says your choice is wrong? Anyway, I defended my “Tsinghua dream” at that time, saying that I went into their own good research, should still be able to be very good, after all, this is my childhood dream ah. But he turned out to be right, and NOW I’m thanking him.

7. Computational geometry, creative resurgence

Tsinghua or the same way of class, most of the class is a lot of people together, together doze off. The teachers also read from the book, and I actually found that they are no different from the teachers in Sichuan University. The difference at Tsinghua is that when it comes to exams, all the entertainment activities that used to be done have disappeared. I used to go roller skating every night, and I was left alone for the test. Because everyone is afraid of the exam, began to stay up late to review. There is a class is not easy to skip class, some teachers will suddenly call the roll, absence will seriously affect the final result.

For doctoral students, legend has it that there is another rule, that is, the last 10 percent. That is, regardless of your grades, if you are in the bottom 10% of the class, you have to repeat it. If they repeat two subjects, they will be expelled. Faced with such a cruel regulation, many students are worried all day long. I just spent the first period with the nagging of my classmates next door. But I still didn’t take the test seriously, so I didn’t check the official truth of the claim. I still don’t listen to the teacher’s highlighting, I still don’t think the teacher’s questions are good, AND I still hate it when people make us calculate matrices by hand. Maybe they thought it was cruel, or maybe they thought who would do the work if they fired a PhD student, but it was later changed to a rule that if a PhD student got an 80 he didn’t have to repeat it. I also don’t know why I think the subject I failed in the exam also scored 80. Did you deliberately let me go there?

But there was a lesson in my life. It changed my view of teachers and made me think that classes could be so much fun. That’s computational geometry. There were only a dozen people in the class. Many students didn’t take the course because they heard it was difficult. But I’m one of those people who knows what’s going on. The way the teacher taught the class was very different from other classes. We all sat in a small classroom, and the teacher had exquisite slides, animations, and sometimes inserted a famous quote of a great scientist or philosopher. During class, the teacher would stop many times for students to ask questions, and after class, everyone would actively discuss novel questions. The grading method of the course is also very special, the usual score accounts for 30% of the weight, homework is divided into several points, you can choose whether to do it or not, the total score of the homework multiplied by 30%, plus the final score of the big homework multiplied by 70%, is the final score. Seriously, the class was so fun, I only skipped it once. But sometimes the number is less than half, because other courses are too stressful, some people go to review other courses. But Deng never calls the roll and sympathizes with those who skip class. He also asked us if there were any other classes that were particularly tense, so we could skip the next class. It’s really touching.

It was in this course that I got to know Wang Yi, and our close cooperation made me appreciate what research is. We were in a group for the big assignment, actually a group of three, but the third person didn’t really do anything. Wang Yi and I decided to write a 3D Voronoi graph scanning algorithm demonstration program. Wang Yi’s 3D graphics programming ability is very strong, so he made the interface, and I was responsible for the algorithm to generate data as the back end. We wrote programs on our own machines and talked on the phone from time to time about interface design. I found Steven Fortune’s algorithm program at Bell LABS, decided to read it, and adapted it into a partial-run algorithm for the demo. But Fortune’s program had few comments and used a strange data structure that was hard to understand. Fortune also notes in the program that this algorithm, while effective, can be a challenge for programmers. So I emailed him and asked him to send me a copy of the algorithm paper, and he agreed. But a month later, the letter arrived in my hand, by which time we had finished our homework. Because it took me a week to understand his program and replace his troublesome and inefficient data structure. Then the successful back-end and Wang Yi’s front end design interface union. When I looked at Fortune’s paper, I realized that the program had actually improved the core content of the paper. I deeply understand the importance of practice, maybe with his paper I will be misled, not to write a program that can actually run.

Because of our united efforts, the teacher was very satisfied with our big homework and he gave us the highest score of 100. Since both of us overfulfilled our homework after class, we both got full marks in total. This is my long-lost 100. The only grade I ever got was in elementary school. What does 100 mean to someone who doesn’t care about exam results? If it was any other course I would have given a damn, like I got an 80. But this 100 points is our unity and research, it contains our sense of cooperation, to our friendship, to our enthusiasm of the affirmation. I think there’s room for improvement, but I’ll take that 100! Only in this course can I get 100 points.

From then on I felt what research is. It’s just like everything I did when I was a kid. You see a problem around you and wonder why. Then you want to gain the knowledge to solve the problem. You read books, you ask experts, you search the Internet. If you don’t find the answer, well, you can try to find out why for yourself, and that’s the fun part. Knowing why, they want to make this thing useful and beneficial to people’s lives. That’s research.

8. “Working Entirely with Linux” and the promotion of TeX

So I still have a good feeling for Tsinghua. Meeting a great teacher helped me recover from being a goofy tech worker and pursue my dreams. However, after I finished all the courses in the first year, I found that the so-called “research” of Tsinghua university was so chaotic. In fact, what is the so-called “research” conducted by most people in Tsinghua? It’s really writing, not scientific research. I’ll talk more about this later.

From a distance, there is no place to read in the gorgeous lab with advanced workstations. Machines next to robots next to people, no room for books. The seniors were busy writing papers in Word, and from time to time two people were talking loudly across a few lines of the machine. The lab wasn’t well ventilated and there was a large workstation buzzing, so I felt dizzy when I went in, so I didn’t want to go afterwards. The PC used to be public, so I used a different machine every time, but I didn’t have the software I wanted to use. Finally, the lab bought a new machine and assigned it to an individual, installed a Linux system and started writing programs, and installed up to 1 gigabyte of GNU programs on the Sun workstation. I was laughed at by a senior fellow for using something as backward as DOS. So I wrote an article called “Working Entirely with Linux” and put it up on the home page to refute this argument, causing a stir in the Linux world online. Later, I found that almost all the papers in the school were typesetted in Word. I used LaTeX for my undergraduate thesis. I hated the quality of the paper typesetting in Word, so I wrote an article to promote TeX and attack word in the market of paper typesetting. Now I became famous, surprisingly, not for my research, but for these amateur things. I didn’t want to be famous for it at first, but seeing everyone next to me using TeX, I thought I’d done a good thing and at least made the paper look nice.

But the content of the paper, it is my pain forever!

9. Training program

I finished all my studies in the first year. Originally, I wanted to choose more courses, such as French, but the doctoral students of Tsinghua University need to submit a “training plan” for the tutor to sign. The modification can only be made with the approval of the tutor. The tutor saw that I chose French, said this second foreign language or learn to go, audit also go, I am mainly afraid that you too many classes fail to pass the exam will be trouble. Without saying anything, I cut French, leaving just enough courses for credits. In fact, I want to choose a lot of things, sports, music and so on, too embarrassed to tell the tutor. It turned out that the master’s student across the hall was taking piano and their tutor didn’t care. Why are we being treated like this?

But I regret not adding French to my training program. After I audited the first French class in a new semester, the teacher said, “I know many students audit the class, so there are too many people in the classroom, and the effect is not good. This is not good for everyone, next time please audit students do not come. I’m thin-skinned, so I didn’t go next time. Later, I wanted to study by myself but there was no teacher to teach me. After watching ten reflets, I gave up.

Later, I realized that Tsinghua does not need well-rounded doctoral students, and that supervisors can undermine students’ abilities to some extent. The tutors don’t really have our best interests at heart, but they don’t like our classes because they not only take up time of research (or work), but they also open their eyes so much that they can easily have other choices and leave. All activities: teaching assistant, internship, must be signed by the tutor. Most tutors find excuses not to let students do these things. Deny them opportunities for teaching assistants and internships, making it difficult for them to find jobs in the future, but to serve themselves, or to serve their acquaintances. Even this time WHEN I went to Tibet, I had to get my tutor’s signature to get a border certificate. The teacher said, without the tutor’s signature, how do you run out and do not come back? Ma ‘am, what the hell am I doing in that place?

In addition to that, the other two magic bullets are a PhD and a penalty. Do you know how much a PhD from Tsinghua is worth? Don’t know? So the doctor will have to pay 30000 yuan of liquidated damages when he drops out. Most of the poor students are afraid of this. This is your bond. This is how Tsinghua has its graduate students firmly under control. What can I say to an insecure school that is so afraid of its students running away? If you were good, you wouldn’t be afraid of us running away! The run will eventually run away.

10. My self-cultivation

In study, I am always an underfed person. I can’t pick a class, so I sit in. After the audit felt that the teacher said not good, I taught myself. When I am free, I will go to the library to borrow books to read. When I was an undergraduate, I had already found a characteristic of myself. I would quickly discover new things and learn to use them. Although these things are not innovations, they enrich my skills and give me a greater ability to innovate.

For an assignment in computational geometry class, I learned a little Java in three days to write an algorithm demonstration program, just enough to finish the program. I began to get to know The low-level details of TeX, read The TeXbook, and found out The mistakes in The answer of an exercise question. Started porting the GBKFonts program as an exercise for my CWEB language. Read almost all the manuals for Xlib and have a deep understanding of how XWindow works. I got in touch with Scheme and did most of the SICP exercises. I realized the power of LISP to change the way we’ve misunderstood this ancient language for years. Then I learned Common LISP and started using it to design a library of functions for studying computational geometry. Still looked for a few strange and odd program to play additionally, wrote a few experience to put on the net to look for others.

I realized I wasn’t good enough at math, so I started reading math books. Concrete Mathemtatics, What is Mathematics? , Science and Hypothesis, GEB, … Although I did not read all of them, I gradually believed in my mathematical ability and found that mathematics was so simple. I became interested in philosophy…

We talked about it, and it was like this

After class, it’s time to start doing research. But what? The teacher gave me some papers to read, meaning to see if I had any ideas.

I started to feel confused, so I asked my tutor if I could discuss it with my brothers and sisters. Is there anyone else doing this? He said, “You do this alone, everybody do a problem, think for yourself, that’s research.” I think so. I should think for myself. But after a while, IT didn’t work. I wanted to implement an idea, but I didn’t know if anyone had tried and failed. The experiment will cost a lot of time, so I want to know why so many talented people don’t use this method. When I brought up the need for discussion again, he seemed annoyed and said, “Why do you always want someone to make the same thing as you? You’re not trying to copy someone else’s paper?” I’ll say no more. Continue to do my experiment, the result is not ideal. While it’s important to practice on your own, why not use the experience of others? It’s not lazy. If there is a discussion, a lot of times when one person asks a question, the other person will tell him whether the question has been done before, how important it is, and intuitively tell him how difficult it is. But without discussion, there is no chance to even ask “has anyone done it?”

Later, I often surf the Internet to see how foreign universities conduct research, and I found that they all have seminars and discussion groups. Later, I bought A book called A Beautiful Mind. I saw that the talents before Princeton drank tea in one place every day and discussed problems. They argued until they were red in the face. That’s the life I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid! Computational geometry had taught me a love of collaboration and discussion, and now I was alone. I had to tell my tutor that collaboration and discussion were very important. After I made my case, he said, “All right. Anyway, elder brothers and elder sisters have their own affairs. If you want to discuss anything, please discuss it with me and your deputy tutor.” So I started meeting with them every two weeks. Every discussion feels like they don’t know what I’m talking about, and all they can think about is how much better is this than anyone else’s? Can you make it to this meeting? So macro. I find it a complete waste of time to discuss with them.

Later, as more and more students joined the project, the tutor decided to apply for a project to study together with people from the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. So we went to the Chinese Academy of Sciences every two weeks to discuss. But it feels like they’re doing the same thing. The teachers at THE Chinese Academy of Sciences felt that their research was too theoretical and expected us to bring something practical to them. But we also have nothing real, all the problems are from other people’s paper. The assistant advisor started telling them how important this was… They also took the opportunity to look into some of the issues they had put aside. The overall feeling of the discussion is that there is no purpose, no topic. Sometimes someone said he was thinking about a question, and after a while it was rejected. Sometimes a person reads a paper and makes a feeling. I was sitting there thinking, what the hell are we doing? We don’t even know what’s worth studying. What’s worth studying? Then the younger brothers and sisters began to think about changing the problem to see if they could create a new problem. Their approach was, as I said, “If there’s a problem, solve it; There is no problem, create a problem to solve!”

During the doctoral forum, students all felt that they had similar problems, not enough discussion, not enough communication. Therefore, I propose to set up a Common Room similar to foreign universities to discuss problems. But most of the teachers said, “There are so many people in a room like this every day. Who’s going to pay for it?” Ll: Well, if a teacher wants to pay for his own office, there’s a Common Room. Even if there is a Common Room, the only discussion there is about where to send articles. The system determines the behavior. My assumption is too idealistic.

Analyse, why does the teacher not advocate discussion? Because the problems are finite. The teacher has worked so hard for so many years to solve these problems, assigned to each of you, without conflict. It would be great if both of us had a problem. Who gets the paper? The university requires the first author to count papers. If two people are writing papers, one must be rejected when submitted to the same conference. This is adverse to collective development, we are not a few papers mixed graduation? Why bother?

11. Paper, paper, paper

But I’m more concerned about the content of the paper. It pains me to talk about papers. I haven’t seen a few articles in my direction that I think are decent. I mainly study the wiring algorithm of integrated circuit. Some points on a plane are electrodes in a circuit. Now we need to connect them with copper wire. How can we minimize the length or delay of the connection? This problem is related to a famous problem in geometry called the Steiner Tree problem. My tutor wrote a paper like this for IEEE Transactions.

A senior who had graduated revised and revised several papers on the basis of his research. English is not enough to translate into Chinese, put in domestic journals. Later, a senior sister was revised on the basis of this senior brother, and sent a lot of articles. But in my opinion, their paper is nothing but rehash, without any innovation. When a problem is solved, the person who solved it shows his intelligence, and he can leave it alone for the time being as to what the problem does for him (though I strongly object to that too). Later, someone came to deal with this problem, mostly assigned by the teacher. He also made some modifications. It doesn’t take much time to modify the idea. How do you write your Introduction well? To make your work feel meaningful to others? This is kung fu. A writer’s kung Fu. I once met Jean-Claude Paul, the head of INRIA, and he said to me, “Tsinghua students are all writers, not scientists.

Now all the graduate students in Tsinghua university do is write a paper and then find a place to invest it. SCI is the best, and EI is the next. It’s okay to have a magazine in the middle of nowhere that nobody reads, and it’s okay to pay for it. I know of a SCI indexed journal in Japan that charges $1,000 for its pages. The tutor pays, does not cast white does not cast, cast good graduation!

Now I’ve been “assigned” to do it, too. It’s a famous question, but it’s a famous question that’s been studied for decades. There are many great people who have made important contributions, including legendary people like D.Z.Du. But why do we study this question? I still don’t understand it.

At the beginning, my tutor just gave me two papers, which were said to be written by one of his former favorite students, an associate professor in an American university. One of them explained how to generate MST (minimum spanning Tree) without constructing Delaunay Triangulation. It was stated at the beginning of this article that Delaunay Triangulation could not be used to construct MST under RECTIlinear Metric, so he designed a new algorithm. This algorithm is much simpler than Leo Guibas’ algorithm. Matroid was mentioned once in the article, which made me feel inscrutable as a beginner. However, I doubt that “Delaunay triangulation cannot be used to construct RMST”. After theoretical analysis, I think Delaunay triangulation can be used to construct MST even under RECTIlinear metric. I decided to put my idea into practice and write a program to construct AN RMST from Delaunay Triangulation. It wasn’t innovative work per se, but I wondered if such a thing could be used to build a Steiner Tree. Then I did have an idea. Experiments show that my algorithm is several times faster than previous algorithms.

Does that make my algorithm a paper worth writing about? My tutor said I should write one, but I thought I just accidentally came up with an improved algorithm while picking on others, which would not make any improvement for future research. Although the program is a bit faster, few networks that large require such a fast algorithm, and a multiples improvement doesn’t seem to me to be a theoretical improvement. So I feel that this result is not exciting to me and I don’t want to write a paper. However, under the repeated requirements of the teacher, I actually wrote two papers on this research. According to him, “Summarize your work in stages.” At first, the judges always said it was not practical. The tutor said it was the judges’ problem. They thought it was not practical. After several submissions, it still failed. Finally, I could not bear it and told my tutor what I thought. I said, “The quality of a writer is measured by the paper he puts in the garbage basket. Let me hide this paper in my garbage basket forever.” But he was reluctant, said you have to believe in their own strength, and then my algorithm random praise some. I said I don’t care. Whatever you do. I started researching things THAT I liked. Then he actually participated in a European conference, which was included by LNCS, which is indexed by SCI, so I had an SCI article! I don’t like the article is SCI!

The second paper is even more legendary. Several missed, for reasons that the judges said were not compared with the most advanced algorithms. And I have no program to compare it to, the program of the man I despise. I have no choice but to ask him to give me the code, only binary, not the source code. I did it. It was faster than him. But I guess there’s something wrong with his programming. He keeps core dumping. But write it down and add it to the paper. Hit the jackpot and won a prize for best paper. Then there was an announcement on the campus news: “Our student Wang Yin won the award for the best paper in XXX conference. This is the first time for mainland scholars to win such a high prize at such a high-level conference.” This “high-level” meeting, in my opinion, is rubbish. Americans send their worst papers here just to travel.

The low-level conferences I’ve seen, the low-quality papers are almost all from IEEE. The reason is very simple, IEEE conference proceedings are as thick as two bricks, or double column small type, of course can accommodate so much garbage. So I don’t like IEEE either.

The volcano erupted in small scale

After winning the first meeting, the assistant tutor happily said, “Go to the meeting instead of me” and went to Santorini Island in Greece for a tour. You came back and told me Greece wasn’t fun, it was hard, but you didn’t go. Then he proceeded to ask me to patent the algorithm.

I’ve been working on this paper. I’m not interested at all. Now I have to write patents, “like teaching primary school students to do this, step by step to write the algorithm clearly, cite examples.” I think I’m going to die, and if I keep doing this, I may end up with nothing but these little things when I get my PhD. I finally had a small outbreak. I told my associate advisor frankly what I thought scholarship should look like, and I didn’t think it was worth applying for a patent. I also told him that I was disappointed with the research environment in China.

He panicked, probably thinking I wanted to drop out, and rushed to talk to me. Tell me, I know you have big ambitions in your heart. So I’m not going to write a patent this time. I know you want a better research environment, but how can you create something big if you don’t get down to it? And then you start talking about Einstein, Marie Curie… Then say, in fact, you work hard here, there are many opportunities to go abroad in the future, you want to go to Harvard, you want to go to Princeton, you can ah!

You said yes? Why don’t you go show me? Our lab never goes to any of these places.

13. All-round development

After being completely disillusioned with tsinghua’s research. I’m going to take GRE and TOEFL abroad. I attended a new Oriental class. I didn’t learn much English, but I was exposed to a lot of new ideas. Luo’s comments are particularly interesting, although I don’t entirely agree with him. Writing GRE compositions especially cultivates thinking ability. In order to write GRE compositions, I often go to the library to read English philosophy books, education books for a question I don’t understand… I get totally different views on many issues. What is the purpose of university? Are people’s values determined by reason? And so on and so on. I read about Aristotle, Plato, Kant and others. There is even a philosopher who says “All Animals Are Equal”. I read his article and found a lot to refute. I read decard’s article and said, “To master science, you have to master all of it.” It really clicked with me. I just want to be a person who knows a lot of things. I want to combine art and science. Although I was criticized by a Turing prize winner for this view, I still believe in Decal.

From these conflicting points of view, I formed my own judgment. I began to be able to look beyond the colored glasses that had been put over my eyes. I began to examine my own thinking, my previous views. See if they were thrown in without judgment. I detected many, many errors. I have flaws in how I treat people, in how I understand people. I also detected some colored glasses passed by my mother. I began to learn to treat people and things in my own new way. I no longer blindly trust authority, even if it’s a Nobel Prize winner, a Turing Prize winner. I have my own free mind.

During that time, I felt my mind was opened. I started trying things I had never done before and things I never thought I could do well. I believe over and over again that I can. I can learn to draw, I can do tai Chi well, I can understand classical music… There are so many good things in the world for me to learn and develop!

However, we were sentenced to 5 years in Tsinghua university like prisoners. PHDS are our shackles.

14 wake up, the mystery of paper

What do the tsinghua graduate students talk about? Is the paper. We talk about it at dinner, at tea, and in bed. You know, they want us to issue SCI. What should we do? Some of my senior brothers delayed graduation because they didn’t have a paper.” This happens to be the student who is worried about the bottom 10% elimination. His teacher is an academician, but he is too busy doing odd jobs like writing Word documents and has no time to think.

Later, I heard that the university has a regulation that doctoral students must send 4 papers to graduate, one of which must be SCI index, or two EI index. Isn’t the grand-looking SCI EI something similar to Google? How is it indexed by it? In particular, the number of articles for the requirements, and no judgment on quality. I didn’t even know that was the graduation standard after two years of school. By the time I knew, someone had told me SCI=Silly Chinese Index. It’s ironic.

The school has no ability to evaluate the level of students, so it takes the number of essays as a measure. What kind of students and what kind of LABS do these graduation standards produce? Is it true that the tutor is incapable of judging whether a paper is good or bad? Some of them are, but some of them aren’t. Even though he knows your paper is worthless, he will ask you to publish it. I find that behind the number of papers is the wishful thinking of some people. Think about it. What does the state look at to fund research? The paper. What do you look at to evaluate the level of a school? The state has no ability to evaluate your ability, of course, only by how much paper you have. So paper means money. As long as you can write paper, whether you are trained or not, your future development is of no concern to us. Your paper can be read by others, can be converted into productivity, what do we care? No wonder some academicians try their best to collect more students, would rather help out their own tuition fees also want him to come in. Because students are the money. Paper can bring funds, you can buy cars and houses in the United States, without funds, let students work. A couple hundred bucks a month hanging on for your ass when they want that PhD!

15. Wake up, Doctor proletariat!

Now I am tired of the so-called “academic” in China. I’m going to give up my PhD at Tsinghua and go abroad to find a good teacher and do real research. It’s not an easy decision to make in doc’s fourth year. Someone told me not to give up, do you know how many people are envious of you? Do you know how valuable a PhD from Tsinghua is? But I can’t be so silent anymore!

Doctor degree, tired out how many young Chinese! I won’t waste my youth on it. If I can’t find a good teacher abroad, I will find a simple job and live with the one I love. Some say it’s a waste of talent? The chaotic life in Tsinghua is a waste! At least being a waiter makes me feel like I’m contributing to society, and I smile when I see the customers satisfied. But being a doctor is not. I feel like a useless person.

I have fully seen through the failure of Chinese education. It hurt me when I was in high school, and it still hurts me now. Chinese education has become the culprit for burying talent. To stay in this circle is to give in. I don’t make a sound, we don’t make a sound, and the world will continue to work like this. I’m going to say a loud “No” to the system today.

I left. But China will never be short of people who work hard for Tsinghua! Because their mothers will tell them that Tsinghua is the best school in China. You want to go to Tsinghua and honor our ancestors…

Act 16.

At 3pm on September 22, 2005, I reiterated my idea with my tutor and associate tutor in my tutor’s office in the East main Building. All of that, and my plans to drop out. After some examples of Einstein, Marie Curie, called me steady preaching ineffective, severely criticized me only for myself, regardless of the teaching and research group for my efforts. And said, “If you can’t do research for the lab anymore, we can’t support you. I will take back the money given by the lab in the first two months. If you decide, you can immediately write the application for dropping out. Our lab has nothing to lose. We have enough people to do your work. But I want to warn you that if you quit, you’ll have your accommodation taken away from you!”

Then came the assistant tutor’s high-pitched growl: “Yes, you despise us. We’re not as smart as you, but we work hard… You know that best paper award you got, how hard we worked? Do you think it’s that easy to get? How many foreign experts…”

It was like a farce, like a dream. When he had calmed down, I said “goodbye” and silently walked out of the office.

You’re dropping out? This is my application to drop out.

The end of the 17.

In the evening, I received an email from my deputy tutor, saying, “There is one more thing I need to tell you: your achievements in school include your efforts, the guidance and help of your tutor, the help of your classmates, as well as the support of the school and the country. Your achievements as a doctoral student belong to the teaching and research group, the university and the country. Just as our patent for an occupational invention belongs to the school.

You have achieved results in MST, SMT etc. It belongs to the teaching and research group, school and country. Units have the responsibility to carry out reasonable application, national construction, national honor service. Responsible for further enrichment and delivery to high quality publications. Here we would like to explain the above situation, and also tell you: if you are willing to further organize these achievements, we have given you specific suggestions for modification, you are welcome to modify according to them. If you give up, we will carry out specific improvement, delivery. We will respect your opinion. Thank you.”

Finally, the residual value of paper is not forgotten. Further confirms my judgment. Do they care about me? Not at all. They only care about paper. What does it matter if I am displaced? I don’t know how many ignorant brothers and sisters will base their research on the paper I despise.

18. Afterword.

The purpose of this article

Repair what you can — but when you must fail, Fail noisily and as soon as possible. —-Basics of The UNIX Philosophy You can fix — but if you must fail, make a noisy exit as soon as possible. Basic UNIX philosophy

I am not a good program under the Chinese education operating system. I had been running the system for almost 20 years before I made a noisy exit towards the end and dumped this big core file. I know some programs quit early, and I’m not as good as them. But there are some apps that just die, and there are a lot of apps that are zombie, and they stay in the system forever and become a burden to the system, and I’m better than them in that. At least I gave the programmer a chance to use the debugger to examine the core file and investigate what went wrong with the program.

“Why all the fuss and grumbling when you quit?” If it’s just a complaint, I’ll just pull the students next door to join in the complaint and be done with it. But EVEN though I’m not a good program, I think I should do something to fix the system and fix myself. I hope that the education and research environment in our country will be better, so that we can live a peaceful life without having to go abroad. How many lovers have broken up with pain because one has gone abroad? How many parents are looking forward to the return of their overseas children? I can’t just apply to a foreign school and leave like so many people do. I took the GRE exam a year ago and wanted to go abroad, but I always deluded myself into thinking that the situation in China would be better. Sometimes I thought I saw hope, but it was dashed immediately. One master after another, let me hope again and again, but found that they do not have much effect on the environment. Some masters were not satisfied and went away again. I also tried my best to transform the environment, but finally gave up after repeated efforts were ineffective and I thought I was not capable enough.

I once suggested setting up a Thu-Technical Report of Tsinghua University when I found that everyone was busy publishing papers instead of discussing them. Here’s what I think: the worst drafts go in the trash; Things that may be useful but not yet worthy of being disclosed to everyone are sent to THU-TR for departmental review; If you find thu-TR useful, revise it and submit it to a conference or journal. Wang Lei, academic assistant of the department, gladly accepted my suggestion and volunteered to maintain a THU-TR number. But no one is willing to put their own painstaking writing but really not worthy of publication in here, because there is always a place in the world to put this thing, or SCI and EI, and this THU-TR is not even an official journal. I was later told that if all the students put their stuff in here, I don’t know how many tutors would be anxious with us. So that was the end of thu-tr’s plan.

I wrote a year ago to Knuth, who I believe is the true master. I said I wanted to drop out and asked him to recommend some real researchers to teach me. He replied, “You should talk to an elder who is well versed in Chinese culture.” I realized he probably felt it was a cultural thing. I wanted to know why Chinese technology wasn’t working, so I started reading something about culture. Later, I went to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to attend the dean’s lecture of the School of Humanities of Tsinghua University in Hsinchu. Later, I attended the seminar of the School of Humanities of Tsinghua University. As one teacher said, when a system cannot measure academic performance itself, it uses a seemingly equivalent standard, such as the number of papers or gaokao scores. But once the standard is established, people work towards it, not towards academic excellence per se. They will always find many problems in the system, find flaws, to meet the standard, rather than improve their own academic level. Finally, this criterion has completely failed to reflect the level itself. I was thinking, this is a big problem, not only because of the environment, the system, but also because of the culture over time. From a lecture given by the dean of Tsinghua University in Hsinchu, I found out how the British opened the door to China with science and technology, and how the Qianlong Emperor was not interested in science. It seems that China has not paid attention to science and technology since ancient times. China has its own advantages and its own culture. Yes, science and technology is a double-edged sword. I don’t know what will happen if it develops like the US. Our Chinese culture is a treasure, but it has been beaten black and blue by foreign cannons. It’s not our fault, but we have to try to restore our culture and not always blame everyone. I started reading things like Tao Te Ching, and I went to the Xilu Society to discuss ancient culture, and then I started doing tai Chi.

I felt that without practical goals, my research would be completely paper, just like I felt in high school. So I set up a field of my own, and I called myself a “research doctoral student,” and I wanted to understand how doctoral students live. I just want to know how many other students have a similar dilemma. I have talked to many friends to understand their difficulties, both graduate students and undergraduates. I thought I should get to know more people, so I tried to work as a reporter in the graduate news agency, hoping to get a press card so I could ask people some questions. As a result, they said I was not eloquent, so I became a secretary. Reporters later told me that they were assigned tasks by their superiors and that it was impossible for you to report what the students really thought. In order to get more contact with foreign cultures and compare the differences between Chinese and western cultures, I joined the Students’ Association for Foreign Exchange (ASIC), where I made many good friends. During the doctoral forum, many students also told me about their research problems. When discussing the establishment of special interest groups (SIGs), I proposed to set up a Common Room. One of my classmates said that when she went to Stanford, there was a very good Common Room where many people discussed together, which was Common to Stone in foreign universities. When I told my Oxford friend what I thought, he was surprised and said, “You don’t have a Common Room?” Later, WHEN I talked to some of the teachers over dinner, I found that they couldn’t do anything about it either. Teachers have to pay for their own offices, who can support you to have such a big room? And even if there were a room, who would discuss it? Just take someone else’s paper, try to find something that can be improved, or discuss which meeting to hand out paper. The Common Room is just a formality, as long as someone is interested, they can also find a teahouse to discuss. The problem is that no one has the energy or mood to have a real discussion. The system is everything. There’s nothing we can do. I felt I was too small for a student, so I tried to ask the master for help. I went to Andy Yao to talk about my problems. And he said to me, “Don’t try to change the environment! You don’t have the power. Not even me! Make yourself better.” To reform myself, but how? So I decided to change an environment, to a real research place to experience, to learn.

In fact, I do not regret entering Sichuan University, do not regret coming to Tsinghua University, cherish all the history, because without them, I may not be the present me, with my own ideas. I may have fallen from my comfort. They are not perfect and even give me pain, but I still cherish, cherish the friends here, here every plant and tree. Maybe it’s called sex. I will be better, I will miss my mother country.

I will come back and tell you what I have learned, and I will give you and the other children true happiness, for sure!

Article source: www.cnblogs.com/newcaoguo/p…