When I visited the "Glorious Years" Village History Exhibition Hall and the Laozhou Township Party Building Cultural Center in Laozhou Township, Yi'an District, I saw in the column of experts and scholars that the first place was my classmate Pei Qibing. I haven't seen him for more than 20 years, and the impression of studying together at Guanghui School in Laozhou Township 40 years ago has gradually blurred, as his primary and junior high school classmates, the main experience of that year, especially when I went to Nanjing University to visit him when I was in college, and the situation when I was warmly received by him is still vivid and evocative.
Pei Qibing, who is two years younger than me, was born in August 1965 and is also a native of Guanghui Village, Laozhou Township, Yi'an District. He is currently the associate chair, tenured professor, and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Nanjing University, and his master's and doctorate degrees from the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the supervision of Professor Qian Renyuan, a leading polymer scientist in mainland China. He has successively worked at Ling Xueping University in Sweden, UNIAX in the United States, and Stanford Research Institute in the United States. He has published more than 400 high-quality papers in top international scientific research journals and has been cited more than 30,000 times.
As a liberal arts student, I have little interest in his field of study, and I don't know much about his post-master's and doctoral studies, but I still know a little about his experiences in elementary and junior high school, especially the interactions we had when we were in college together.
Pei Qibing was born in the original first production team of Guanghui Village, Laozhou Township, near the Zhoutou Sun Island Scenic Area, and I was born in the original tenth production team of Guanghui Village, adjacent to the original cooperative village (now Central Village), and our two families are located in the southernmost and northernmost parts of Guanghui Village. When I was in elementary and junior high school, we were all in the same class.
At that time, there was a shortage of teachers and teaching facilities in rural schools, and there were often some strange phenomena that seem unthinkable now. In the early 70s of the 20th century, when we were just in elementary school, the school could only provide very simple desks, and we had to bring our own stools from home. I remember my stepfather and mother and the people in the village joking kindly: "What kind of school are you going to here, you don't have a stool to sit on, and you have to bring your own." "It means that our batch of dolls are not good at school, and the conditions are poor.
At that time, the conditions of the school were indeed very poor, not only the number of teachers was insufficient, but also the classrooms were not enough, so that after a year, not all the first-grade students could be promoted to the second-grade, and many of my classmates studied in the first grade for two years, just like me. At that time, students could not keep up with their studies, and it was common for them to repeat a grade for another year. But it should be rare for us to become a first-year repeater.
This has a ripple effect, which naturally leads to another phenomenon. At that time, there were often brothers or sisters in the family who studied together and were in the same class. Pei Qibing is one of them, and he and his sister are in our class. There are two other brothers, two brothers from the original 11th production team of Guanghui Village, elder brother Pei Xueping and younger brother Pei Xuehe, who are also in our class at the same time.
When we were in elementary school, we were both young, we didn't live in the same village, and we didn't usually interact much, so our impressions were blurred. After junior high school, especially in the late 70s of the 20th century, after the resumption of the college entrance examination system, the school strengthened the attention and cultivation of outstanding students. At that time, Pei Qibing, along with me and several other classmates in the class, were all optimistic about the Chinese teacher Tao Huien and the mathematics teacher Cao Changfu, and felt that they were all good seedlings worth cultivating. At that time, for the children in our villages, it was a great joy for the ancestral tomb to smoke and ascend to the sky.
In the second year of junior high school, compared with Pei Qibing and several classmates who were later admitted to the technical secondary school or the provincial key middle school Tongling No. 1 Middle School, there was not much difference in grades. It's a pity that after the third year of junior high school, my grades were not stable or even slipped, especially the problem-solving ideas and skills of mathematics and physics, which were no longer as sharp as Pei Qibing and several other students.
In August 1979, the high school entrance examination was announced, and among the nearly 50 students in the junior high school graduation class of our Guanghui School that year, only Wang Daofa was admitted to the Chaohu Health School in Anhui Province, and took the lead in jumping out of the farm, becoming a news figure who made his parents glorious, teachers proud, envied by classmates, praised by villagers, and famous throughout Guanghui Village. After graduating, he has been working in the Tongling health system. Later, many people felt sorry for the secondary school students of that year. At that time, the secondary school students were all top students in a million, and if they studied in high school, they would be admitted to today's 985 and 211 first-class colleges and universities. Pei Qibing, Li Shaoping and Shen Xinbin also had outstanding results, and were admitted to Tongling No. 1 Middle School, a provincial key middle school. Dai Maoping and I and the other four classmates, although they were also favored by the school and teachers, but the results of the high school entrance examination were still a little worse, and we were only admitted to Tongling County No. 1 Middle School (now Tongling Middle School), a key middle school in Tongling County at that time. In my impression, it seems that there are two junior high school classmates surnamed Zheng who have also been admitted to secondary schools since then, one is a veterinary major in an agricultural school, and the other is a Tongling Normal School.
Two years later, in 1981, Pei Qibing was admitted to the Department of Chemistry of Nanjing University, and Li Shaoping was admitted to Hefei University of Technology, which is said to be related to prospecting. After graduating from university, Li Shaoping first worked in a geological exploration team in Tongling City, and later said to have worked in Ma'anshan, and he has not seen him for decades. Shen Xinbin was later admitted to the chemistry department of a university in the province, and after graduation, he taught in the city's middle school, and the last school he worked in was his alma mater, Tongling No. 1 Middle School.
After graduating, Dai Maoping was admitted to the Youth League School of Anhui Province, and after graduation, he worked in various government agencies and units in Tongling County (now Yi'an District), and has been engaged in leadership and administrative management for many years. In July 1981, I reached the score line of secondary school admission in the college entrance examination, and I filled in the Anhui Provincial Finance School, but I was not admitted that year because the number of volunteers was exceeded. After repeating for one year, he was admitted to the Chinese Department of Anhui Normal University. After graduating from university, I returned to Tongling City, first worked at Tongling College of Finance and Economics (now Tongling College), and then transferred to Tongling Daily in early 2001 until my retirement in April 2023.
Looking back on the study and work experience of our students, it is really emotional. It can be said that we are fortunate to be the beneficiaries of reform and opening up and the restoration of the college entrance examination system. Among them, Pei Qibing's development is particularly prominent, he not only walked out of Anhui, but also out of China, to the world, to become a doctor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a professor of the University of California, Los Angeles, the United States, and a well-known expert in the international plastics electronics community.
Professor Pei Qibing was appointed as a part-time distinguished professor at Donghua University
I still remember the time when I went from Wuhu to visit him at Nanjing University during the National Day in 1983. During the day, he took me to visit Yuhuatai and visit Xuanwu Lake Park and Mochou Lake Park. After dark, we sat on the lawn of Mochou Lake Park, the breeze blowing in our faces, and the heat gradually subsided. We chatted while watching the scenery by the lake, the sky is the bright moon, there are bright lights in the distance, the two towns are the subject of the problem, fortunate to be admitted to the university and meet in the ancient capital of Nanjing, the heart is naturally a lot.
In the evening, I stayed in their dormitory and watched a wonderful football game with my classmates on their NTU campus.
That football game seemed to be very crucial, and the stars of the Chinese football team at that time were Zuo Shusheng, Gu Guangming, etc. Football in the 80s of the 20th century once brought infinite hope and happiness to the Chinese people, and the great women's volleyball team won five consecutive championships and became the strongest voice of Chinese sports in that era. The national football team and women's volleyball games are all popular events that Chinese people pay great attention to, and college campuses are no exception. In short, during that trip to Nanjing, I was very warmly received by Pei Qibing, and I was deeply impressed by two days.
Around 2004, during the summer vacation, Pei Qibing returned from the United States to visit relatives. At that time, I had already been transferred from Tongling Finance to Tongling Daily. I met with Wang Daofa, Shen Xinbin, Dai Maoping, and other junior high school classmates who were working in the local area, and exchanged information about each other. Since then, we haven't seen each other again for more than 20 years.
The world is very big, and we all took the exam from Guanghui Village, Laozhou Township, Yi'an District, but Pei Qibing went to a foreign country and met twice in a hurry. The world is also very small, around 2020, at a dinner, I met the leader of a secondary company in Tongling Nonferrous Metals, saying that his son was studying in the United States, and his mentor was Pei Qibing, a professor of chemistry in Xuba Township, Yi'an District. As soon as I heard this, I immediately corrected that if the tutor was Pei Qibing, a professor of chemistry, and he was determined to be from a certain continent in Yi'an District, then I could basically be sure that it was my classmate Pei Qibing, who was from Laozhou Township.
Author: Wang Xianglong