My college life: the class of 1978

 The Class of 1978:

Medicine, Maturity, and a Swapped Watch

I was only seventeen when I was admitted to Nanyang Medical School, and it was entirely against my will. Fresh out of high school, I was still deeply in love with that world and deeply admired my teachers. Naturally, my first choice was a teachers' college and becoming one. But my mother, who worked for the city’s health administration, had a profound reverence for doctors. She insisted I list medical school as my second or third choice, and I reluctantly complied. Leveraging her connections, she arranged for a medical school representative who traveled to the provincial capital to admit students, pulled my file first, and secured my admission. That was how I unexpectedly found myself on the path to becoming a doctor.

Because the historic resumption of the college entrance exam took place in December, 1977 and the class of 1977 was started at the following September, 1978. To avoid the confusing with the prior year's class, we, the Class of 1978, started in the winter of December 1978.

College life was a jarring departure from everything I knew. Our classroom was a melting pot of entirely different generations. Out of 45 students, fewer than ten of us were fresh high school graduates like me. The remaining 35 were older, seasoned by life; many had been sent down to the countryside for re-education, while others had already worked as teachers or laborers. The age gap was massive. One of my classmates was already a father of two, and several other older boys had left girlfriends behind in the villages; and the youngest one was only 15 years old at the time.

Most of the students came from surrounding rural counties, while only a few of us were locals from the city. The school required everyone to live in the dormitories during the week. On Sundays, our only day off, those of us with family nearby would head home to helper with household chores and indulge in a comforting, homemade meal.

The medical class was divided into two units. My unit was Class Two, consisting of 46 students, including just nine girls. Class One was an additional unit added later to accommodate the high volume of qualified applicants, and it had only six girls. The nine of us in Class Two shared a single room crammed with bunk beds. I claimed a lower berth, using the upper mattress strictly to store our extra belongings. My roommates included the two Zhaos—Chunling and Dongju, both born in 1957, who came from the countryside. Then there was Yanjiang (born in 1958) from another city, followed by Zhourong (1959), Wangyu (1960), Xiaorui (1960), myself (1961), Wanling (1961), and Hongping (1962).

We rarely had conflicts, finding joy in simple pleasures. We would walk to the park, take group photographs, and occasionally watch movies. As sheltered high school graduates coming out of the shadow of the Cultural Revolution, we possessed absolutely no knowledge of biology, physiology, or romance. We had to start entirely from the basics. Worse, time was against us. The faculty didn't have the luxury of teaching us in detail; they could only provide brief overviews to teach us how to navigate the textbooks. Consequently, we were buried under mountains of reading assignments. We read constantly, desperately memorizing pages upon pages without fully understanding the concepts. We were forced to compress a standard five-year medical curriculum into just three grueling years.

Our routine was relentless. We woke up at 6:00 AM and studied in the classroom until 10:00 PM. Free time was a luxury we didn't have. Even on weekends, the classrooms remained packed with students hunched over books.

By the second term, the school relocated to a new campus. In a desperate bid to secure cadavers for our anatomy lab, some of the boys in my class actually went to a local execution site. They brought an unclaimed body back to the school and placed it in the dissection lab. Looking back now, I seriously question the legality of it all, and I am still astonished that my classmates possessed the nerve to do it.

Because my heart was never in medicine, a quiet depression settled over me during those college years. I studied hard and tried my best, but my grades hovered strictly in the middle, sometimes just barely passing. I learned firsthand that when your passion is entirely absent, everything becomes an agonizing hurdle, and excellence remains out of reach.

There are few bright spots in my memories of that time, but I did fall in love with a classmate—a distraction that undoubtedly contributed to my mediocre grades.

To understand how it happened, I have to go back to the very beginning. During our opening ceremony, Wanling and I were chosen as student staff to serve tea to the principals and faculty. Later, our class advisor, Mr. Fan, appointed me and two boys as temporary class leaders because I had held a similar role in high school. I resented the appointment. I was miserable in medical school, younger than most of my peers, and wanted absolutely nothing to do with class politics. But I didn't even have the energy to fight it—a numbness that I now realize was a symptom of my depression. I chose to stay silent and detached. Fortunately, the two boys were incredibly proactive, handles all the responsibilities so I never had to bother.

In those days, owning a wristwatch was a major status symbol. As a reward for getting into college, my mother had gifted me a beautiful Shanghai-brand watch, which I wore every day. One evening, during a study break in the classroom, a male classmate showed me his watch, which featured a sleek, dark dial.

"That's beautiful," I remarked.

"If you like it, we can exchange watches for a few days," he offered. Then, testing me, he asked, "Do you dare to switch?"

"Why not?" I replied. At seventeen, I was fearless and stubborn. So, right there in front of the entire class, we swapped watches. To me, it was a harmless, temporary exchange between classmates.

But to him, and to the rest of the class, it was a monumental event.

The older boys, with their more mature and complicated minds, viewed the switch as an exchange of romantic tokens—a formal confirmation of a relationship. It caused a massive stir in the boys' dormitory. Every boy in the class knew about it, while the girls and I remained completely in the dark.

A few days later, while the girls and I were taking our usual post-dinner walk outside the campus, we bumped into the main class leader. He pulled me aside and told me what the boys were saying. I burst into tears on the spot, overwhelmed by a deep sense of injustice. As an innocent seventeen-year-old, romance hadn't even crossed my mind, and I had absolutely no desire to be in a relationship. The moment I got back to the classroom, I threw his watch back to him and took mine back. That became the school's famous "Watch Switch" incident.

My college life

A Turning Point in 1978

It was February 1978 when I arrived at Tanghe First High School to join Class 2 of the third-grade science track. Officially, I was a "repeat student." I had already graduated from high school in Nanyang City, but after failing the 1977 college entrance examination, my mother refused to let me give up. Determined to see me succeed, she arranged for me to move to her hometown in Tanghe County to prepare for the upcoming exams.

During those months, I lived with my maternal aunt, Feng. She was my mother’s younger sister and only five years older than my own sister. Aunt Feng worked as a contract laborer at a local cotton factory—a precarious existence at the time. Unlike permanent workers, she had no job security, no health or retirement benefits, lower pay, and her household registration (hukou) remained tied to the countryside.

Because she was newly married, the factory had allotted her a tiny room. Her husband worked at an oil factory, where he had a small room of his own, but they had chosen to set up their first home together in my aunt's quarters. My arrival disrupted their newlyweds' life. Too young and naive to understand the sacrifice they were making for my education, I accepted the arrangement. To give me space to study, my aunt sent her husband back to sleep at his own factory housing. He would only come over for lunch and dinner before leaving each night.

With a roof over my head, I threw myself entirely into my studies. Because my high school years in Nanyang coincided with the Cultural Revolution, I had barely learned the standard curriculum. Although this was supposed to be a "review" year, almost everything was brand new to me. Armed with a series of mathematics, physics, and chemistry textbooks my mother had bought, I was eager to learn and held my own in class.

Even though I was the same age as my peers—having started primary school a year early—a few classmates found it strange that a city girl had come to a county school. They correctly guessed I was a repeat student. In the culture of the late 1970s, failing the exam and repeating a year was stigmatized as a failure, and some of them laughed at me. While it stung, I kept my eyes on the prize. I knew exactly why I was there, so I refused to let their whispers derail me.

I did manage to make a few meaningful connections. I formed a quiet friendship with the girl who shared my desk. I also grew to admire the top student in our class, viewing her as my role model. It wasn’t until after the exams that I realized she liked me, too; she warmly invited me to her home to share a meal with her family.

My time in Tanghe was short—just about six months. After taking the college entrance examination in July, I returned home to Nanyang. As a high school graduate in 1977, I was part of the "waiting-for-employment" youth town-girls, facing a stark reality: I either needed to get into a school or find a job to secure my future. My mother remained fiercely determined that I should continue my education. To cover all bases, she had also signed me up for the Secondary Technical School exam (meant for middle school graduates) and the Technical School exam (which trained skilled factory workers).

Once home, I took both tests. Because they only covered middle school material, I sailed through them. Soon, an incredible piece of luck came my way: I passed all three examinations and received physical exam notifications for all of them.

Naturally, the university track was my first choice, so I returned to Tanghe County for my college medical evaluation. I will never forget the look on my physics teacher’s face when he saw me. With a disdaining sneer, he asked, "Is it really you? You got to get a physical exam?" I knew I wasn't the most naturally brilliant student in his class, but I also knew how hard I had worked, constantly asking questions during those five grueling months. Against his expectations, I had made it.

To everyone's surprise, the girl who had been the top student failed the college entrance exam and had to move to another high school to repeat the year. Though she qualified for a secondary technical school, she initially resisted going, but her parents pressured her to take it. At that time, any higher education—even a secondary technical school—guaranteed a city residency and a stable state-assigned job. Her parents were ordinary town workers who desperately wanted that security for her. As for the boys in our class, they performed exceptionally well and scattered off to various universities.

I ultimately attended the medical checkup for the secondary technical school, where I met some genuine middle school graduates. Safe in the knowledge that I had qualified for far better options, I didn't even bother showing up for the basic technical school physical. I had fought my way out, and a new life was finally waiting for me.