Three years ago, Huang Guoping, a 2017 doctoral graduate of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, had a doctoral dissertation that became popular.
In his letter of thanks, he wrote:
"I have come a long way and endured a lot of hardships to hand this doctoral dissertation to you. ”
Next, he looked back on his more than 20 years of study:
When he was 12 years old, his mother ran away from home, his father died in a car accident at the age of 17, and then his mother-in-law, who had taken care of him for 17 years, also passed away suddenly, leaving him and an old dog at home.
In order to make up for the tuition, he caught yellow eels at night, fished, raised pigs, and rented out the buffalo at home on weekends, barely enough to make up for the tuition.
The suffering of the human future can be overcome, but the dignity of the human front is extremely fragile.
Reading and writing under a kerosene lamp, a leaky roof at home, being called out of the classroom by the teacher for not paying tuition fees in class, walking barefoot on the hot road in the summer, and walking through the long aisle in a thin shirt in the winter......
If it weren't for the award and scholarship after hard work, he would have given up a long time ago.
When he entered high school, the school waived his tuition and fees, and he met his kind uncle, and while solving the tuition fees, he also came into contact with computers, as if he saw the light of day in the dark night.
With his lonely courage, he was admitted to Southwest University, and finally went to the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
From a small mountain village to a big city, from a rural baby to a doctoral student.
Looking back on the way he came, he calmly concluded:
"The ideal is not great, I only hope that I will be more than half a hundred years old, and I will still be a teenager when I return, and I hope that I will have the opportunity to re-understand the world and live up to the hardships I have endured in this life. ”
Huang Guoping's story has touched countless people.
In this era when it is difficult to produce a noble son from a poor family, he has used 20 years of persistence to tell us that the matter of God's reward for diligence still exists.
Some people say that there is no light in his world, and he has lived himself as light.
Some people say that his letter of thanks is the modern version of "Sending Dongyang Horses to Life".
"Sending Dongyang Horses to Life" is a gift preface created by Song Lian in the Ming Dynasty, which tells the story of his difficult study process.
This article has inspired generations of Chinese readers, and has become a famous article through the ages, and has also been selected as a Chinese textbook.
Even with today's rapid socio-economic development, there are more and more wealthy people.
But we can be sure that heart-warming student stories like Huang Guoping are still happening.
They don't have much choice, and the pen in their hands is the only weapon they have to change their lives.
For example, Yao Shengwang, an 18-year-old rural teenager in Yunnan, has both disabled father and grandfather.
When the university acceptance letter was delivered to the door, he was still digging ginger in the field.
In the face of the blessings of others, his smile was shy and simple.
Growing up in a remote area, the Yi teenager Mu Nai is hotter and hotter, and his family is also poor, and he has to help with farm work every day after school.
Relying on his personal diligence, he was finally admitted to Peking University.
These examples of hard work are still worthy of praise.
Unfortunately, these real-life examples can only be seen in the official news of the college entrance examination season every year.
Among the film and television works that most people are most often exposed to, there are very few works that reflect this type of character positively.
Their image has become "nerd", and most of them have become a background board for beautiful men and women to fall in love.
But in neighboring India, a film of this kind came out last year.
At the end of the screening at the Asia-Europe Youth Film Festival, the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Subsequently, on IMDb, nearly 50,000 people gave it a super high score of 9.2, the highest in Indian films in the past five years.
On Douban, its opening score is as high as 8.6 points, and it is currently stable at 8.2 points.
Many people have commented that this film is the best movie of the year in the world in 2023.
This movie is - "Failure in 12th Grade".
This film is an inspirational movie based on real people.
Many good Indian films are often delayed by their titles.
For example, the familiar "Three Fools Make a Mess in Bollywood", when you look at the title, you think it is an Indian song and dance film, and if you don't agree with it, you will play and sing, but it is actually an inspirational movie with tears in laughter.
The same goes for Failed in 12th Grade.
Looking at the title of the film, it is confusing, and some translators even mistakenly translate the original English title "12th Fail" into "12th Fail".
In fact, it refers to the fact that the protagonist failed the entrance exam in the 12th grade, and this failure became a turning point in his life.
Manoje is a low-caste Indian man.
The people in the countryside where he lived were fierce and robbers were rampant.
The officials oppress the people, and the common people eat and wait for death, and their lives are like a pool of stagnant water.
After failing the 12th grade exam, Manojie was reluctant to live a life of seeing his head at a glance.
He left his hometown with all his savings, and after going around and around, he anchored one goal - to take one of the most difficult civil service exams in the world.
During this time, his luggage was stolen, he met three or two like-minded friends, gained sweet love, and went to work as a worker in a flour mill.
There were only four chances in this exam, and Manojie worked 15 hours a day, studied 6 hours, and could only sleep 3 hours in order to go ashore.
The sky paid off, and in the end he successfully went ashore, married Bai Fumei, and became an official of the Indian Police Department.
Just listening to this story, there is some unsettling.
Because China is a big country in examinations, the concept of "one examination determines life" is rooted in the hearts of every Chinese.
In ancient times, there was a imperial examination system, and there was a bizarre story like Fan Jinzhongju;
In modern times, there is a college entrance examination system, which is a single-plank bridge that almost every Chinese has to walk.
In recent years, the popularity of postgraduate entrance examinations and public examinations has also remained high, and there are too many examples of changing our fate through exams around us.
But "Failure in Grade 12" is not quite the same story as we usually hear.
Here is a popular science, India is the real big country.
They have more than a dozen civil service examinations, large and small, among which the most valuable is the examination organized by the Federal Civil Service Bureau of India, abbreviated as UPSC.
200,000 people took the exam, and less than 200 people were finally admitted, which is the most difficult civil service exam in the world.
UPSC考试主要为印度警察局IPS（India Police Service）和印度行政服务中心IAS(India Administrative Service)输送人才。
In the film, the actor took the IPS exam, and after passing the exam, he became a police officer of the Indian Police Department.
The female protagonist is the IAS, and after passing, she is the township head or even the deputy county magistrate.
The difficulty of this examination is comparable to that of the imperial examination system in ancient China.
What's even more rare is that this film is not only a warm and inspirational film, but also exposes the social problems existing in India in the process of telling about the public examination.
In the backwoods, teachers help cheat, and schools let it go, and what the school principal calls an "old tradition" that will continue forever.
Those in power are aware of the chaos, of course, but they don't want change.
Because the best way to consolidate political power is to ignore the people, and when the masses receive education, they will be easily incited and blindly follow those in power.
That's how the votes come in the election, and the people at the bottom of India have long lived in the shackles of caste and religion.
In 1942, India's "untouchable" leaders shouted the slogan "educate, agitate, organize", meaning that citizens are educated, but it is a problem for those in power.
Manojie lives in such an environment.
He was a farmer all his life, until an upright official came to the village, and he taught Manojie a lesson - always be honest.
Being an honest person comes at a price, and Manojie missed a lot of opportunities because of this-
Failed the 12th grade exam, almost missed true love on the way to the exam, was too honest and led to poverty, and was backstabbed by a friend and chose to forgive.
The final interview session was his last chance to go ashore.
He could have concealed the fact that he "failed in the 12th grade" and successfully passed the assessment, but he still chose to be honest and confessed his past.
"My goal is not just to become an official, but to reform our country," he said.
If I fail, I will become a teacher and tell children not to cheat, to study more, and to live an honest and happy life.
"If I can't be the sun that shines on the earth, I can still be a light that illuminates my streets. ”
This line became the finishing touch of the whole film, and many people cried when they saw it, and I believe that it will be used as a motto by many people in the future.
Don't forget, this inspirational story is not made up, but has real people and real stories.
In the end credits, the hero and heroine also took a photo with the prototype couple of the story.
But authenticity is also a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it makes the story more convincing.
On the other hand, because all characters have archetypes, and no one is easy to offend, the film has beautification of almost every character in terms of shaping characters.
I don't dare to go further in the creation of the film, and it is essentially a model of an inspirational biopic.
Specifically, it is very similar to Lu Yao's "Ordinary World".
are sincere enough and full of inspiring power.
But his bones are still full of daydreams that the phoenix man wants to counterattack.
In "Ordinary World", the two protagonists Shaoping and Shao'an, all met Bai Fumei, and they were all absolutely infatuated with them, and this kind of plot treatment is actually unrealistic.
In "The Failure of the 12th Grade", behind the touching, the movie actually can't stand scrutiny, and many details are unreasonable.
For example, the protagonist is a dark and thin poor rural boy who comes to the city with all the savings given by his grandmother, but only to have his money looted just because of snooze.
It is indeed not surprising that this happened to people who travel to India.
But people who have been poor do not make such mistakes, money is more important than their lives, and this plot is unreasonable.
For example, when the male protagonist was cornered, he met a kind-hearted rich second generation.
The rich second generation easily told him that he could take the civil service exam, and one sentence directly changed his fate.
The biggest difference between the rich and the poor is the poor information, and a rich second generation is so generous, but it also seems a bit false.
Not only that, but on the test road, he also met a senior who provided free food and lodging, and was ordered by senior officials.
A beautiful girlfriend from a high caste never leaves him and proposes to him on the day of his interview.
I also told him that whether you are an official or in a flour mill, I will always love you.
The most outrageous is the final climactic scene.
Twenty years ago, stories like this were often published in The Reader and Yilin.
A certain interviewer went to the interview, and when he left, he picked up the garbage on the road and threw it into the trash can, which happened to be seen by the boss, and finally he was admitted out of praise for his good qualities.
This kind of article was very popular back then, and now it is regarded as poisonous chicken soup.
"Failure in Grade 12" is still the same old routine when dealing with climactic scenes.
Indian society is full of discrimination against low-caste people, and there is almost zero tolerance for such flaws as "cheating on grade 12 exams".
But just because he was honest and told the truth, the male protagonist impressed the interviewer and let him pass the interview.
This treatment is no different from the chicken soup article in "The Reader".
In addition, there are problems with the portrayal of some details of the film.
For example, in such an important exam, Ma Nuojie regarded tourism as terrorism, which led to the final failure, and the exam required him to write an essay, and Ma Nuojie couldn't write 90 words in half a day.
Friends who often take exams, I'm afraid they will frown when they see these details, this is not an Indian song and dance film, it is simply an Indian science fiction film.
The most regrettable thing is that the film only tells the story of Ma Nuojie who completed the carp leaping over the dragon gate through hard work.
How he worked to eradicate corruption in society after he came ashore is not mentioned, there is a sense of powerlessness to punch the punching bag.
This is similar to fairy tales that will only tell you that the prince and princess have lived a happy life, and will not tell you that your married life may also be a piece of chicken feathers, then it is not a fairy tale, it is a social ethics film.
In fact, many officials are also from poor backgrounds, counterattacking all the way, and after reaching high positions, they often can't withstand the temptation of sugar-coated shells and fall from power.
It is easy to fight the country and it is difficult to defend the country, and those officials who keep the bottom line are even more grateful.
There is another intriguing detail in the film.
After the title of Manojie's gold list, his father heard the news and immediately ran all over the village to tell those who had bullied him, my son has become an official, you should be careful in the future.
Isn't this the reverse "My dad is Li Gang", the weak take the position, and the relationship between the strong and the weak is changed, but the essence of the weak has not changed.
If this is intentional by the director, it can be called a stroke of genius.
If you want to maintain your rule, don't close the upward channel, leave a small opening, and let the people below roll up wildly, and in the end, everyone only cares about stepping on each other, and no one studies the rationality of the system.
Similarly, in the public media, sharp social issues are hidden, so that the poor can indulge in nipple pleasure.
Today is cheating for melon-eating stars, and tomorrow is fighting each other for men and women, won't society be stable?
This is the deep meaning behind the inspirational work of the film.
When I first watched the film, I only saw the success of one person, and when I watched the film, I saw the failure of more people.
A rural baby who relies on the examination of the public is worthy of respect, but a country that is obsessed with the examination needs to be vigilant, which is probably the director's unspoken meaning.
I hope this film can be introduced to the mainland.
In China, a big country with exams, such a film will definitely arouse the empathy of many people, and the helplessness of being a question maker in a small town needs someone to speak out.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: A chicken
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