Fan Meizhong was born in 1973 in a remote and impoverished mountain village in Sichuan, where his father was a well-known gambler and drunkard.
The mother took on the heavy responsibility of pulling her seven children alone, working hard in the fields during the day and raising pigs at night to support the family.
Growing up in such a harsh family environment, Fan Meizhong has shown a unique and stubborn personality since she was a child. In the face of his father's violence, he not only refused to admit defeat, but even often confronted his father.
In order to fight his father's violence, he exercised his body independently, and through 3 years of hard work, he developed a strong muscle and a strong iron fist.
This kind of difficult living environment and repeated violent confrontations made Fan Meizhong, who was still a child, understand the truth that "if you want to turn over, you can only rely on yourself". He is determined to change his fate and get out of this suffering family through studying.
When he was in high school, he was admitted to the history department of Peking University with excellent grades, and his heart was full of the ideal of serving the country and saving the people.
After being admitted to the Department of History of Peking University, Fan Meizhong found that there was a huge gap between himself and his classmates from superior families, which made him feel inferior and uncomfortable. The other students were not only knowledgeable and well-informed, but many also had specialties such as playing chess and playing the piano, and his entire childhood was spent in hard work and struggle, and he felt out of place, like a loser in an exam-oriented education.
In order to catch up with the progress of others, Fan Meizhong began to study hard. He often skipped class and went to the library, where he read a wide range of ancient and modern classics and scholarly works, gaining a wider range of knowledge.
At the same time, he also bluntly criticized the outdated content and simple teaching methods of the textbooks, which contradicted many teachers and schools.
During his four years at Peking University, Fan Meizhong was almost haunted by his dreams in the library, and he wanted to absorb all the essence of knowledge and thought. However, his test results were not satisfactory, and he was always at the bottom of his grade.
This led to him being labeled a "rebel" at school, and many teachers and classmates were not optimistic about his future.
When he graduated from university in 1997, Fan Meizhong wrote a long essay of tens of thousands of words, systematically criticizing and commenting on the teachers of the history department of Peking University, which caused an uproar. Peking University was very troubled by his deviant approach, but he decided to become a teacher without hesitation, wanting to spread his ideas.
After college, Fan Meizhong first became a history teacher at a high school in Sichuan. In the classroom, he still went his own way, did not follow the usual teaching, and was out of step with the philosophy of the school leadership.
Soon he was transferred out of his senior class. Fan Meizhong was too rebellious and eventually left middle school.
In the years that followed, Fan tried to spread ideas through his work as an editor of newspapers and magazines. But his recalcitrant personality is at odds with the internal environment of many media outlets.
Either the company fired him, or he chose to leave himself. For eight years, Fan Meizhong wandered among newspaper and magazine editors in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Beijing and Chengdu, and never had a place.
In 2008, Fan Meizhong finally found the opportunity to teach at a private high school in Dujiangyan, which gave him a lot of teaching freedom.
Unexpectedly, one day in May of this year, the Wenchuan earthquake occurred, which completely changed his fate.
Fan Meizhong was teaching a history lesson to 10 students that day when an earthquake struck suddenly, and the violent shaking caused the furniture in the room to stagger. Fan Meizhong was frightened, and the memory of the earthquake made him think of escape immediately.
He left the students behind and quickly ran out of the classroom and headed straight for the playground. The move quickly spread among the students, with some qualming him for "running really fast."
After this escape incident was exposed by the media, the public opinion began to denounce Fan Meizhong for being cowardly and shameless. Some people have labeled the negative label of "Fan Ran Run" and have become the public enemy of the whole people.
Although he insisted on his point of view, the uproar was difficult to quell. Under the pressure of public opinion, Fan Meizhong had to quit teaching in 2010.
After retiring from teaching, Fan Meizhong experienced a long period of confusion and trough. During these days, he began to believe in Lao Zhuang's natural philosophical thoughts, and gradually regained the balance and spiritual sustenance of his life through the wisdom of Zhuangzi.
Lao Zhuang's outlook on life of "Taoism and Nature" made him re-examine all kinds of things, and also restored his inner peace. Today, Fan Meizhong earns a living by being a tutor, giving literary lectures, etc., and occasionally publishes some books, which has gained a certain degree of recognition, and his life has become relatively comfortable.
He teaches literature part-time at a friend's bookstore, and his daughter Xi happily here.
Recalling the "Fan Run" incident that turned the world up many years ago, Fan Meizhong said that he did not regret his instinctive escape reaction in the earthquake. He said that now is his best state of life, and he has not given up the spirit of questioning everything that is Xi to be taken for granted.