Real Growth

Zhang Lin, documentary filmmaker

Hello everyone, my name is Zhang Lin. I am a documentary director.

My work Real Growth was released this year.

It tells the story of three children and how they grew up through an educational reform that began ten years ago.

01  The Beginning of an Educational Reform

In August 2012, I graduated from university and stepped into society. Almost in the same month, a group of journalists concerned with education witnessed something astonishing at the Beijing No. 11 School.

The school had abolished traditional classes and eliminated the position of head teacher.

Every student had to choose a mentor on their own, choose what courses to take, and change classrooms for every period—the so-called moving-class system.

The school had more than four thousand students, which meant more than four thousand individualized schedules.

▲ Beijing No. 11 School

This series of reforms came because the year before, the school had been designated as a national pilot for restructuring the school system and developing distinctive high-school education.

So in 2012 the reform measures were rolled out in full.

When the journalists entered the school and saw all this, they felt that a short news piece or television segment could never capture it.

They decided to begin a long-term documentary project.

For two or three months they filmed broadly—students, teachers, daily life—until, finally, three main characters emerged in front of the camera.

Zhou Ziqi, a humanities student who had advanced from the school’s junior high section to the senior high.

He loved history, excelled at debate, was widely read, and cared deeply about current issues.

At the same time, he played video games constantly—

a “non-typical top student.”

Before the semester even began, he had already gotten into an argument with a teacher about the rules of military training.

Quoting Locke, he asked, “If the public will conflicts with human nature, should I follow the public will or human nature?”

The teacher answered, “The public will.”

That scene happened to be caught by the film crew and became his first appearance in the documentary.

Later, Zhou Ziqi wrote a ten-thousand-word proposal on why the school’s military training was unreasonable and how it could be improved, and handed it directly to the principal.

Strangely enough, all his suggestions were adopted:

military training for junior high students was canceled, and the high-school program was shortened by two days.

Clearly, in the atmosphere of reform at No. 11 School, Zhou Ziqi was a fish in water.

Li Wenting, a science-track student from Yanggao County in Shanxi Province, had entered the school from the suburban district of Huairou with the highest score in the county.

As a “good student” shaped by a traditional system, she was completely unaccustomed to the openness and freedom of No. 11 School.

Among the confident, worldly Beijing kids, her shyness was obvious.

After enrollment, she soon began to miss her old life.

Back in her former school, if her grades slipped, the teacher would scold her fiercely; she would cry—and then her marks would rise again.

But now no one supervised her.

She had to manage herself.

Wenting threw all her energy into study, and the pressure became enormous.

Chen Chu qiao, a science-track student admitted through a “recommended-student” program from another junior high.

She could have accepted a guaranteed placement at her original school, but her father said,

“You’re only fifteen—why look for safety? Take the entrance exam for No. 11.”

Rational, calm, and sensitive, she was not one of our intended protagonists at first.

Yet after two or three months of conversation, we realized Chu qiao was astonishingly articulate—

not in the sense of speaking fluently to the world,

but in her cool dissection of herself.

In high school she loved quantum physics, the hardest sciences—

but she couldn’t solve a basic physics problem.

She would admit frankly, “I don’t know what I’ll live on in the future,” and, “I don’t like taking responsibility.”

She read countless novels, watched films, listened to music,

and worried that she was a person who only absorbed but never produced.

In front of the camera—and in life—we rarely see a teenager with such lucid self-awareness.

02  The Three Children Grow Up

Three fifteen-year-olds with distinct personalities began their journey in this new kind of school,

and with growth came confusion and pain.

Zhou Ziqi—the boy who shone from the start—

stumbled on a small matter called love.

He thought none of his three closest friends were better than him,

yet all of them had girlfriends.

He was captain of the debate team.

Under his lead, the team had won the Beijing championship three years in a row.

But by Grade Eleven, academic pressure soared, and teachers began to seize the 4:15-after-school club time.

With no practice hours, the debate team lost a match for the first time.

Furious, Zhou Ziqi wrote an article titled “Return Autonomy to Autonomy.”

In it, he condemned the school’s reform as hypocrisy—

preaching “student autonomy” while secretly filling schedules with homework and tests.

He posted the piece online; it spread beyond the school, angering the teachers.

Zhou’s third struggle lay between himself and his parents—the choice of major.

He loved history and social issues,

but his parents wanted him to study finance,

to “become a CEO and reach the summit of life.”

Before the college-entrance exam, he compromised:

“After all, they’re the ones paying my tuition,” he said.

Then fate played a small trick—

he “messed up” the exam just enough that he couldn’t enter Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management.

He “had to” major in history.

Li Wenting chose as her mentor Teacher Fang Xipeng,

a man who looked traditional, strict, and quick-tempered.

▲ Li Wenting’s mentor Fang Xipeng

Teacher Fang would complain that

“Students’ schedules give more hours to PE than to my physics class,”

argue openly with the grade director—

“Having students write career plans is empty formalism”—

and tell his pupils,

“Your one task is to study.”

Yet under his guidance, Wenting slowly improved.

After two semesters she reached the top hundred and received the ‘Double-Subject Progress Award.’

▲ Li Wenting on the award stage

She made one or two close friends; together they kept a goldfish.

She even joined the school’s water-splash festival, her face bright with laughter.

▲ Li Wenting and friends with their goldfish

In the second semester of her second year,

she made an unexpected choice: a dance class—

learning the then-popular Korean girl-group choreography.

At first her movements were stiff and awkward,

but she practiced diligently.

At the final performance,

she and her classmates wore vests, shorts, and heels,

radiating the confidence of youth.

Though her steps were a little hurried,

everyone could feel it: the shy girl had grown up.

Chen Chu qiao’s story begins in a small classroom.

She took a Chinese-literature elective with only eight students,

devoted to reading Lu Xun.

She thought it would be about learning the plot and main ideas.

But Teacher Huang Juan, who led the class, used what she called a “debate-style” approach—

asking deceptively simple questions that required personal reflection and original answers.

▲ Chen Chu qiao talking about Huang Juan’s class

Through this process, Chu qiao gradually opened up.

During one discussion, she absent-mindedly folded her legs and sat cross-legged on the desk.

She had never dared do that before.

That small gesture released her.

She began sharing her favorite music—songs by the Shijiazhuang band Omnipotent Youth Society.

Soon she wrote her first short story and won a school prize—

a complete set of A Song of Ice and Fire.

The sky suddenly brightened;

the horizon revealed a wound of crimson gold.

Cause and consequence were still unclear.

“It’s coming… coming…”

he murmured, leaning forward,

his outstretched arms flaring like fireflies;

the radio hissed without end.

In the blink of an eye, the fire spread across my vision.

He leapt from the lighthouse into the cold sea.

—From The Traveler of Endless Night, by Chen Chu qiao

By the second semester of her second year,

Chu qiao joined the Micro-Film Club.

She and her classmates wanted to shoot a campus zombie movie—budget 7,000 yuan.

For them, 7,000 was a “fortune.”

They tried every means—selling old DVDs of their work—but earned only 300.

Finally they sought help from teachers, the Youth League, and the student union,

and at last went to the principal.

Before they could present their budget list, he flatly refused.

Principal Li Xigui said:

“Money will not help you.

You must experience hardship and find your own way—

that’s the real training.”

▲ Principal Li Xigui

In the end, Chu qiao’s team had to defend their proposal before the school as if in the market—

explaining how the money would be spent and how it would be repaid—

and only then received investment.

By graduation they screened their short film Extreme Panic at the school,

earned back the funds,

and even made a small profit.

▲ Chen Chu qiao and teammates at the premiere

03  From ‘Education Breakthrough’ to ‘Real Growth’

Back in 2012, when we first chose these three protagonists,

we had no idea what paths their lives would take.

The only thing certain was that we would document how this reform shaped children of such different temperaments, interests, and backgrounds.

At that time the working title was “Education Breakthrough.”

The focus was on depicting the reform itself—

a completely different concept from today’s Real Growth.

By 2016, we had completed a five-episode rough cut.

Only then did the directing team realize the problem:

if we merely described what the reform was and how it worked,

we had no standpoint to judge whether it succeeded or failed.

Moreover, as policies like elective courses and the moving-class system spread nationwide,

our footage was no longer unique.

How, then, could the film remain meaningful in the long run?

The entire team fell into confusion.

Producer Su Guoxiang’s personal investment—several million yuan—was running out.

Crew members left one after another.

In the end only Su and I remained.

For me, after watching the children’s footage day after day,

they had become my friends.

Gradually I found a personal connection with each of them.

Twenty years ago I myself was a “good girl” like Wenting—

studying for exams, thinking only of the college entrance test.

I soon realized that Chu qiao would become my colleague—

she makes films, I make documentaries.

And Zhou Ziqi and I both studied at China’s top two universities;

we occasionally teased each other about our schools

and shared the same frustrations of “model students.”

So I stayed.

I decided to shift the perspective.

I wanted to show the confidence and boldness of a new generation,

and, even more, the confusion and pain every generation must face.

From that point, I became the film’s true director—

in title and in heart.

At a time when there was still no production schedule or broadcast prospect,

we launched two tasks at once:

continue filming the three children in college,

and search for funding and distribution.

From late 2018 on, we traveled to Guangzhou, to Taiwan, to Busan in Korea—

pitching our story at every documentary forum we could find.

Finally, with the help of the Guangzhou International Documentary Festival,

we secured investment and broadcast support from Tencent Video,

and invited Zhou Hao as our executive producer.

▲ Zhang Lin at the Guangzhou International Documentary Festival

I remember the spring of 2019, when the festival gathered several promising directors to meet Zhou Hao.

Only later did I realize it was an interview.

I showed him the trailer and told the children’s stories.

He listened expressionlessly.

Then he asked:

“Give me five words to describe Zhou Ziqi.”

The first four—“talented,” “well-read,” “eloquent,” and so on—

elicited no reaction.

Finally I thought for a moment and said the fifth: conservative.

By that I meant his attitude toward money.

In 2019, while livestreaming, paid knowledge, and self-media were booming,

a brilliant young debater like him still felt he might never earn a living.

That realization shocked me.

These confident kids were not as fearless as they seemed;

they had a cautious side.

At last, Zhou Hao heard what he was waiting for.

He believed documentary characters must be complex and three-dimensional.

He saw that richness—and agreed to be our producer.

Now we had funding, a platform, and an experienced mentor.

Everything should have gone smoothly—

but by the third episode, I hit a wall.

There were seven main figures—three students and four teachers—appearing in every episode.

Education itself is a vast subject;

there was too much to say,

and the film became unwieldy.

In my hardest days I broke down completely.

I stopped working, not knowing what I truly wanted to express.

Music saved me.

One day, a short, complete melody came into my mind—four bars.

I asked myself what I could do with it.

In two days I added four more bars,

and in two weeks wrote the lyrics.

The moment I finished, I knew:

this was the summary of the story.

That melody and those words became the theme song of the film,

sung by the No. 11 School Golden Sail Choir,

and it became my statement of purpose.

04  Not for the Exam, Yet Winning It

In February of this year the film was released.

All three protagonists came to the premiere — this was them, ten years later, grown up.

▲ The three protagonists at the premiere

Chu Qiao told me she thought the film truly captured the air of that time.

Although watching it gave her a kind of shame, as if being “publicly executed,”

she accepted that this was her real self.

Zhou Ziqi said he had forgotten many things,

even the fact that there had been cameras present.

But he admitted that much of what happened back then still left traces in him.

What I didn’t expect was that Wenting came to us after the premiere to apologize.

During senior year she had refused further filming, thinking it would waste her study time.

We had never minded — and didn’t mention it in the film — but she still felt sorry.

After the broadcast, many viewers left comments and bullet messages saying,

“I am Li Wenting.”

She was the one who sparked the strongest resonance.

And not only the students saw the film; many others did too —

for example Zhou Ziqi’s old debate teammate Li Mulin.

▲ Zhou Ziqi’s friend Li Mulin

After watching episode three and seeing how Zhou Ziqi’s open letter had affected the teachers,

Li Mulin tossed and turned in bed that night and finally got up to write a letter of apology to Teacher Wang Chunyi.

Back then he had helped fan the flames by sharing Zhou Ziqi’s post online.

From the students’ point of view, they had not seen the whole picture.

Although the teachers were angry, none of them ever showed their anger to the kids.

At the end of the year Teacher Wang even apologized to them.

The truth is that during this reform the teachers at No. 11 School bore enormous pressure and a workload far beyond normal.

They had a slogan: “Not for the exam, yet win the exam.”

Educational reform and exam results had to be grasped with both hands.

As Wang said, “Everyone wants scores — the students, the parents, and society too.”

▲ Grade Director Wang Chunyi

At the start of the reform the students adapted the fastest.

No one was controlling them anymore — they were delighted.

The ones who struggled most were the teachers and parents.

Because of the moving-class system, students stored their bags in hallway lockers.

If a child lost the key, parents panicked.

Teachers didn’t know where their students went after 4:15 and couldn’t track them down to assign extra work.

Some teachers even ran to the grade director crying,

saying they no longer knew how to teach.

It was a time of disruption.

How to implement the reform was constantly debated —

between teachers and students, and among the teachers themselves —

but everything could at least be brought to the table.

In the following ten years the same reform spread to many schools across China,

yet few people ever saw it up close.

No. 11 School’s experiment was not unique,

but it was arduous — the result of thousands of small daily efforts.

That is why, to us, the act of recording itself was valuable.

05  I Was Only a ‘Survivor’

Ten years have passed since filming began.

It has been not only the three children’s “real growth,” but also mine and the project’s.

For producer Su Guoxiang, he never imagined a documentary could be so hard —

that it might never be released,

and even if released, would bring no commercial return.

For me, it was also the longest and hardest film I have ever made.

Yet I could persist for eight years because I myself grew through it,

and because documentary filmmaking became my way to understand myself and the world.

Before this project I was a product of traditional education.

I changed my fate by passing the college entrance exam and coming from a small town to Beijing.

▲ Zhang Lin at university graduation

Essentially I had never reflected on my own education,

because I had “passed the test.”

In a sense, I was a survivor.

When I watched the footage of those students and teachers,

I sometimes felt deep envy — even jealousy.

Was it only because they were in Beijing that they could receive such education?

In one clip, the on-site director asked the students directly,

“You’re only fifteen and already so mature — is that because you’re from Beijing?”

After three seconds of silence, a student answered brilliantly:

“No. When Chairman Mao was in Hunan, he was thinking even more deeply than we are.”

Hearing that, and seeing their capacity for reflection,

I began to re-examine what kind of education I myself had received.

From age four to twelve I studied piano for eight years.

My greatest achievement was recording a demonstration video for Shandong Province’s piano grading exam.

▲ Zhang Lin as a child studying piano

I still remember that in 1999 the tuition had risen to fifty yuan an hour,

while my mother’s monthly salary was only ninety.

Measured by money, I was receiving an “elite education.”

But that music training was geared entirely toward exams and competitions.

No one ever asked what kind of person I was.

I looked like a sweet little girl, but my real nature was rational, serious, good at multi-tasking yet poor at emotional expression.

So I played Bach best, and performed showy competition pieces badly.

In traditional music education no one noticed my temperament or my taste.

They measured me by a single yardstick to decide if I was “excellent.”

Gradually I grew more and more painful in my music study, wondering if I had chosen the wrong path.

Because tuition was so expensive, I finally quit.

Looking back at the people in Real Growth,

every child was encouraged in high school to ask: Who am I? What do I love? What kind of life do I want?

To me that is the most basic form of freedom.

If someone back then had seen what kind of child I was and told me,

“You’re not cut out to perform, but you could study composition or conducting,”

perhaps I would never have given up music.

Still, I am grateful my mother sent me to learn piano — otherwise I would never have written my theme song.

So every generation of young people must grow through anxiety and pain.

That has nothing to do with era or education system.

06  “You Graduated from Tsinghua — to Do This?”

These post-’95 children grew up in an age of material abundance and information overload.

From a very young age they had seen a far wider world.

Yet, when they reached adulthood and entered society, they discovered that the channels for upward mobility seemed to have narrowed.

They carried passion and ability — yet now, perhaps, could only live as ordinary people.

After high school, Zhou Ziqi entered Peking University to study history.

But after half a semester he already felt that the old-style, scholastic approach to history didn’t suit him.

He also realized how brilliant the truly gifted history majors were, and he saw the gap between himself and them.

So he added a second major in economics, and later decided to study abroad.

▲ Zhou Ziqi on his college-graduation day

He went to the University of Chicago to study public policy — a discipline that uses mathematical models to solve real-world problems, combining his own love of history with his parents’ wish that he work in finance.

Half a year after going abroad the pandemic hit.

He took online classes for a year and a half, then returned to China.

His first job was at Xueersi (Education Inc.).

After two months he was laid off and had to look for another position.

For Zhou Ziqi, the seven years since graduation have been a process of discovering how a “top student” becomes an ordinary adult.

I understand his pressure and the expectations he bore.

After years in documentary work, I myself have been asked in disbelief,

“You graduated from Tsinghua — and you’re doing this?”

Anyone who pursues what they truly want will face other people’s value judgments.

That pain, I think, is universal — and that is why I so deeply understand Zhou Ziqi.

Li Wenting’s story was less dramatic.

After graduating from No. 11 School, she entered the Capital University of Economics and Business to study actuarial science — a major filled mostly with Beijing locals.

She did very well, and was then recommended for graduate study at the University of International Business and Economics — a school made up mostly of students from outside Beijing.

▲ Li Wenting in college

Four years later Wenting realized she could see more clearly than many of her peers what she wanted from life.

She no longer suffered over every choice.

She still kept in touch with friends back in her county.

Frankly, some who stayed behind had scored higher on the entrance exam and entered more prestigious universities.

But many of them soon lost their motivation once in college.

Some picked random majors and later found they hated them.

Others followed the crowd into graduate school only to discover they weren’t suited to it.

All these problems — Wenting had met them in high school, and already tried to solve them.

She had learned self-knowledge earlier, and she was clearer.

She accepts herself as a person who is content with modest comfort,

and she chooses to live a calm, self-consistent life.

Chen Chu qiao went to the School of Visual Arts in New York to study film.

When she first found filmmaking as her life’s direction, she said something that deeply moved me:

We asked her why she loved creating.

She said,

“No matter how good your friends or family are, they’ll all leave you one day.

Only your works won’t.”

▲ Chen Chu qiao on her college-graduation day

In creation she found great safety and happiness.

After finishing four years of film school she made her graduation project in memory of her recently deceased grandfather.

A year after graduation she returned to China, joining film crews one by one to accumulate experience.

She told us,

“Right now I’m just a script supervisor.

But that’s one of only three people besides the director and cinematographer allowed to sit at the monitor.

I can learn a lot there.”

We don’t know when Chu qiao will direct her first film, or when she’ll become known.

But we know she’s happy now and steadily pursuing her dream.

07  Are Good Students’ Stories Worth Telling?

In a sense all three were good students.

So — are the stories of good students worth telling?

At university I studied journalism before moving into documentary work at Qingying Studio.

Journalism had given me a dilemma:

only when a person was very good or very bad did they become “news.”

If someone fell between those extremes, they were invisible.

Documentary is different.

It focuses on human beings themselves — on their lives and their smallest, most ordinary moments.

That fascinated me.

The protagonists of Real Growth, whether seen positively or negatively, are not “news figures.”

But does that mean their growth, anxiety, and pain aren’t worth seeing?

The act of recording itself has value.

For me it meant everything — so I persisted for eight years.

I believe that images which move me will move others too.

From the viewpoint of a “good student,” I have seen many people abandon striving far too early.

We often say we must let children “win at the starting line.”

But if they give up halfway because they’re exhausted, what use is winning the start?

At No. 11 School, students enjoyed relative freedom in their first two years,

but in senior year everything went back to “before liberation.”

Desks returned to rows, lectures and test drills resumed.

For Zhou Ziqi, it was the collapse of a utopia.

Recently I heard about another school in Southwest China that had the resources to implement similar reforms.

In grade 10 and 11, teachers visited No. 11 School to observe;

in grade 12, they went instead to Hengshui High School — the nation’s strictest exam factory.

Adults’ thinking shifts quickly; children’s may not.

When pushed into the worst situation, young people’s easiest choice is to lie flat — to give up.

Zhou Ziqi had once been expected to compete for Beijing’s top liberal-arts score,

but to him it all felt meaningless.

He said,

“Every morning when I open my eyes, it’s like I owe somebody money.

I’m not happy.”

Before the exam, the teachers had a heated debate about Zhou’s state of mind and his career choice.

The school’s strategic consultant, Li Mao, said bluntly:

“A kid like Zhou Ziqi doesn’t lack critical ability.

What he lacks is passion.

He doesn’t know how to connect himself with the world.”

By senior year Zhou Ziqi had already lost momentum,

which made the teachers extremely anxious.

They weren’t worried about whether he’d get into Peking University — for a student who could top the school’s mock exams in grade 11, that was easy.

What they feared was that he would lose his zeal for the world,

and let his talent go to waste.

Li Mao continued:

“If the teachers at No. 11 have no sense of social mission,

then no matter how well they teach,

they’re just providing admission services for the children of the middle class.

That kind of education is tragic.”

▲ Strategic Consultant Li Mao

What is the purpose of education?

What is good education?

These are vast, difficult questions.

A two-hour, four-episode documentary cannot answer them.

But with my camera I can at least raise one:

How does one travel a long road alone?

That, I think, is the ultimate question for every generation of young people.

I hope that whatever system they’re in,

they can, in their youth, come to know themselves — to awaken the inner strength that keeps them moving.

Such strength will sustain them through setbacks,

help them reposition themselves in a larger world,

and let them find meaning in their lives.

After the series aired, one student from No. 11 told me:

“Those three high-school years may have been the brightest, most dazzling time of my life.”

But I want to tell them:

That radiance has never vanished.

It has simply become a tiny ember hidden in every heart —

sometimes flaring, sometimes dim,

but never extinguished.

Ten years have only just passed.

The three protagonists have only just entered society.

We cannot judge whether that old reform was success or failure;

their lives have only begun.

I also hope that everyone who watches Real Growth

will keep a small flame like that alive inside themselves.

Thank you all.