Growing Thinner, Deepening Insight, Awakening

Before going out today, I silently cut my belt a few centimeters shorter. If I don’t, my pants will fall off. Over a year now—I can’t remember how many times I’ve shortened this belt. Many of the pants I brought last year are now packed away—wearing them makes me look like Charlie Chaplin. Growing thinner (衣带渐宽)—do I regret it? A bit. First, I regret not coming out sooner. Second, I feel guilty toward my family.

I’m at PolyU’s library. The worst thing about this library is the cold. Half-frozen in winter, completely frozen in summer. Hong Kong, backed by the Daya Bay nuclear plant, acts as if electricity is free. Buildings keep the AC at 20°C year-round. In winter, it’s bearable—close to outdoor temperature. But in summer, wearing shorts and a T-shirt inside for an afternoon leaves you frozen stiff. When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I had a three-hour meeting in a room. I got so cold I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran outside and stood in the sun for 10 minutes to thaw out. Now I finally understand why Chinese political classes say capitalism is冷酷 (cold and cruel)—it really is! What I love most about this library is the seating arrangement. Each seat is a small cubicle, surrounded by walls on three sides, leaving one side for you to stick your head in. It’s easy to focus on problems without distraction. Whether the person opposite is a美女 (beauty) or a猥琐男 (creepy guy)—you can’t see them anyway. Facing the wall (面壁) really does help.

I’ve been here over a year and have wanted to systematically write about my experiences and reflections on doing research. But systematic writing is hard—maybe even impossible until I retire. So I’ll just write as things come to me. At least I’ll leave something behind, before I forget.

Where to start? A few days ago, I read an article by Wang Yin called “On Research.” Wang is probably not much older than me—roughly the same generation. When people mention him, he’s usually introduced as a “Tsinghua dropout PhD” or “Cornell dropout PhD.” Now he’s a “triple dropout.” I wanted to quote his article, but he’d already deleted it himself. His rebellious personality seems to have mellowed a bit. Wang said research follows four套路 (formulas): 1. Applications. Someone invents “multiplication,” and you publish a paper saying “I found that 25 x 4 = 100.” That counts as research. Usually in papers, the universally understood “multiplication” becomes obscure terms like cellular automata, rough set, Petri nets, queuing theory, entropy… 2. Concept switching—won’t elaborate. 3. Creating problems—turning known things into unknowns, or imagining conditions that don’t exist as already existing. This generates many new problems. For example, “Suppose I’ve successfully laid an optical cable between Earth and Planet Namek to transmit data—there are naturally many new challenges to solve.” You can write a paper solving these problems. If done well, someone might follow up: “Now there are two cables between Namek and Earth—your previous solution doesn’t apply to this new situation.” Another paper. 4. Psychological warfare—deliberately filling papers with formulas and symbols to confuse people. Reviewers tend to think it’s their own lack of understanding and let it through.

These tactics do work sometimes. For NP-Complete proofs, our group has found transaction papers with clearly wrong proofs—directional errors—that still got published. Psychological warfare worked. But really, these tricks are just the初级阶段 (beginner stage) of research. Looking back on this past year, I too have worshipped advanced mathematical theories and模仿 (imitated) complex formulas. Now I realize how naive I was. When I review papers now, I’m no longer intimidated by complex formulas—but you need to be mentally strong and have solid foundations.

Looking back at my academic career, I feel quite ashamed. Until I came to Hong Kong on July 1 last year, I hadn’t even entered the door of research—I was just circling outside. I was a frog at the bottom of a well, yet feeling pretty good about myself. Part of it is my own fault, part is the domestic research environment. I graduated with a Master’s in 2007. Looking back now, I wasn’t really a qualified graduate student. In two and a half years, I didn’t read a single paper. Thanks to China’s “relaxed” publishing environment, I wrote a garbage paper, paid to have it published. I hadn’t mastered the most basic scientific thinking—finding problems, refining them, solving them, experimental evaluation. No one ever told me to read other people’s work, to see what others were doing. I actually felt resistant to writing papers, thinking they were all吹牛 (bullshitting), that those people couldn’t write code. Two mistakes: first, jumping to conclusions without understanding the facts—nothing like Wang Yin, who criticized only after understanding. Jumping to conclusions without understanding is like the Cultural Revolution’s labeling. Second, distorted values. I’d been constantly indoctrinated that computer science is writing code, and being good at code makes you awesome—no other criteria matter. But computer science is highly diverse. Writing good code doesn’t mean everything. Then there’s the environment. During my Master’s, many people were coasting, being cheap labor for their advisors writing code. So I didn’t feel particularly out of place. Same after I started working—everyone around me was chasing projects, teaching classes for part-time students from外地 (other provinces) to earn extra money. I followed along, not feeling out of place. But put in PolyU’s environment, where everyone is doing research while you’re writing code every day and teaching diploma-buyers—you’d be embarrassed to say hello. No common language. That’s the environment.

My current supervisor took me in for further study and gave me a “generous” scholarship (at least higher than a domestic teacher’s salary). He probably valued that I was a faculty member at a top “985” university. He had high expectations—initially saying I could graduate early if I performed well. But after a year, it’s not hard to see his disappointment. Now, forget about early graduation—on-time graduation looks unlikely. Just graduating would be good enough. Even passing the年底 (year-end) review to move from PhD Student to PhD Candidate is uncertain. If I don’t make it, I’ll have to go home.

Yeah, when I first arrived, I was worse than an undergrad. At least when I graduated from undergrad, I had solid foundations—I could still recite the mathematical expectation of a normal distribution and the first derivative of tan(x). All forgotten after years of disuse. When I first arrived, my supervisor told me to find a paper from a top conference or journal and find 10 errors in it. I didn’t even know where to find papers, or what counted as a “top conference” (don’t laugh—I was once an award-winning young teacher, and plenty of domestic teachers are worse off than me). I googled some random garbage paper, found 10+ issues in just one page. “Hey, writing papers isn’t so hard!” But then came blows one after another. The department had many academic talks. I attended a few and didn’t understand a thing—not an English problem (I nearly scored full marks on IELTS listening). My foundations were too poor. I didn’t even know which field their topics belonged to. Then there were two negative examples: a senior lab PhD student dropped out without graduating; another PhD who started around the same time jumped to his death under pressure. I learned that unlike China’s “easy in, easy out” policy, there’s淘汰 (elimination) here. Few are directly expelled—most voluntarily drop out, cutting their losses like selling stocks. If you’re sure you can’t graduate within the time limit, staying means paying high tuition plus opportunity cost—better to leave early. Some people in China treat education as a customer relationship—paying tuition makes you a customer, and the customer is god. They should really read up on social contracts. I’m still optimistic enough not to jump. Weak foundations? Time to make up for it. My supervisor gave me a book topic list—dozens of books. The only ones I was familiar with were OOP and programming. I borrowed piles of books from the library, printed piles of classic papers, and read until 2-3 AM every night. I’m still catching up.

Late-night walks home have one benefit: building courage. The dormitory is far from campus, past three funeral parlors. One cremates foreigners, one cremates Chinese, and one cremates both. Walking past them at 3 AM, seeing smoke rising from the chimneys—if the Party hadn’t taught me atheism, I’d have been scared out of my wits. Hong Kong is short on land—the funeral parlors aren’t in wilderness. Across the street from them are hotels and tea houses.

Then came my first paper submission—another heavy blow. In hindsight, I was too impatient. When you can’t even objectively evaluate a paper yourself, blindly submitting to top-tier conferences has near-zero acceptance rate. Getting rejected is hardly surprising. Four reviewers: three strong rejects, one reject. Very consistent. Failure is the mother of success, but I couldn’t bear to look at the reviews at first. It took a month before I gathered the courage to print the comments and read them in a corner. In hindsight, I had violated some basic taboos of paper writing. Weak foundations again. But a fall in a pit, a gain in your wit—not a bad thing.

The Party used to tell stories about young soldiers joining the revolution initially just for food, then receiving Marxist-Leninist education and realizing revolution isn’t about food—it’s about liberating all humanity. They’d develop崇高的革命理想 (lofty revolutionary ideals) and fight for them their whole lives, transforming from consciousness-lacking peasant children into communist revolutionary successors. Following this narrative framework, my initial motivation for studying abroad was indeed “impure”—I just wanted a “foreign diploma” to go back and coast through life. But this year of study has truly benefited me immensely. Like a frog jumping out of a well, I’ve seen the vast world outside. I’ve learned how to do research, how to be a researcher. And I’ve come to deeply love this challenging life. Whether I graduate or get a degree, this experience will leave a deep mark on my life and influence me forever.

This is getting long. Any longer and nobody will read it. So I’ll stop here.

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Actually, I have so many more thoughts. I don’t know which to write about first. I’ll list them here so I don’t forget. Some aspects I think are better in mainland China, some are better in Hong Kong. Readers can comment and vote, or request topics. Of course, I won’t publicly share opinions on sensitive political topics like protests or national education—otherwise I might not be able to go back after graduation. If I can finish writing these topics in three years, that’d be good enough.

Military training and recruitment: mainland collective education vs. Hong Kong’s个性教育 (individuality education) Scholarship system: mainland’s “big pot” vs. Hong Kong’s cutting-your-flesh bleeding Xinjiang vs. New Territories: mainland vs. Hong Kong student loans Prison-like schools and truancy: mainland vs. Hong Kong high school and college entrance exams Real vs. fake credit systems: analysis of mainland and Hong Kong higher education systems British, American, and Chinese education styles Counselors, class teachers, and gardeners Dormitories, cafeterias, and logistics socialization