The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear.
I’ve seen that road before.
It always leads me here.
Lead me to your door.
– The Beatles
Steelhead. Seafaring rainbow trout. Anadromous oncorhynchus mykiss. Steelhead are a puzzling fish. Are they salmon? Are they trout? Apparently, oncorhynchus mykiss’s life outcome is highly path dependent. Some spend their entire lives in the rivers and streams of their birth, feeding on insects, snails and leeches. In adult form, these homebodies are delicate and pretty with mottled olive-green backs, silvery bellies and a pink lateral band.
“Do you have a plan B?” asked a family friend. Stupidly, we did not. Han Feizi Junior would be the second student from his mucky muck international school in Hong Kong to attend Tsinghua University. As bilingual as this school claims to be, English was still the default language and its graduates were funneled to the usual suspects – Ivy-plus, Oxbridge, near peers and wannabes. Chinese universities were not popular. Not even Tsinghua. Perhaps especially not Tsinghua.
Fly fishermen pursue rainbow trout with dainty nymphs, dry flies and streamers. A rainbow taken on a fly rod should be lovingly cradled in the palm of one hand. The sport is in the chase, in the presentation, in the seduction. Which flies are working? It’s looking… is it just looking? Will it take the fly? Stream bound oncorhynchus mykiss reward and frustrate sportsmen with their beauty and their artifice.
Do you have a plan B? That did give us pause. Were we in over our heads? Han Feizi Junior’s credentials were generic Ivy League wannabe. Tsinghua’s admissions criteria for Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan were considerably less rigorous than for mainland students. Mercifully, the gaokao, the world’s largest annual standardized test, was not required.
A recent Peking University graduate explained, “We give international students a chance. But they have to prove themselves.” Non-gaokao admits walk around campus with an asterisk – often confirmed by their bottom quartile class rankings.
It was an eccentric idea. Many Hong Kong applicants to Tsinghua are recent mainland emigres. They went to primary school on the mainland and speak native Mandarin. Han Feizi Junior’s roots are diaspora. His Mandarin was merely functional – at best. That, I told him, was why he had to do undergrad in China!
“You will learn so much more at Tsinghua,” I told him, “not just computer science but you’ll get the equivalent of a Chinese language and Asian studies major as byproducts.”
I was just making things up that I hoped were true.
Some oncorhynchus mykiss, however, have other ideas. Bucolic streams may have everything a trout needs – insects to eat, rocks for protection and companions with whom to frolic and mate – but c’mon, they’ll be lucky to hit ten inches. How many calories could a mayfly possibly have? Where is the ambition?
It was a multi-year hard sell. Han Feizi Junior did not have much of a say. He would go to Tsinghua because of his old man’s eccentric fantasies. He did not oppose mostly because he had no idea what he was getting into. Truth be told, neither did his old man.
We did not have a plan B. The trepidation felt for Han Feizi Junior by concerned parents was palpable. Can he keep up with China’s gaokao mutants? Everyone knew Han Feizi Junior as thoroughly Westernized with subpar Mandarin. What if it just did not take?
The anadromous or ocean going variant of oncorhynchus mykiss somehow discover their inner salmon. A metamorphosis takes place. Leaving the rivers and streams of their birth and venturing into the ocean, these oncorhynchus mykiss become steelhead. Anabolic hormones are released. Growth goes exponential as they feed heavily on baitfish and krill. Flesh turns blood-red from krill carotenoid.
Han Feizi Junior graduated from Tsinghua University this past weekend.
Four years ago, his mother dropped him off at the gates after two weeks of COVID quarantine. First year was miserable. We feared we had made a horrible mistake. Along the way, it got easier. Mandarin fluency improved in large step changes. Classes suddenly became easier to follow. A secret girlfriend helped (thank you). The gaokao mutants chilled out. He learned to work the system. Professors opened their labs. He published his first SCI paper. Senior year, he strutted campus like he owned the place.
It all went according to plan. Shockingly well. For better or for worse, Chinese Universities take in loco parentis seriously. Dorms are gender segregated. Students are assigned academic advisors. Sleep is enforced with a midnight lights-out policy. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan students have their own administrative office with additional resources (international students as well).
Counseling and mental health support are readily available. Social life tends to be wholesome – student clubs, intramural sports, high speed rail trips, dinner with the gang. For better or for worse, nobody is falling off a frat-house roof after an ill-advised keg stand. While video games are a menace, nobody is holed up in their rooms with massive bongs baking themselves for days on end.
Academically, Han Feizi Junior overcame first year struggles partly by utilizing personal strengths – organization and time management – and partly because high-strung Tsinghua students loosened up as gaokao trauma receded in the rear view mirror. Professors were generous with undergrad research opportunities of which Han Feizi Junior took full advantage, publishing his first AI conference paper.
In adult form, steelhead are two shades of gunmetal, gray back and chrome belly. Vestigial flashes of pink may be faintly visible on cheeks and along the lateral line. Compared with normal rainbow trout, steelhead are enormous. Sportsmen pursue steelhead the same way they pursue salmon … because, for all intents and purposes, they are salmon. The sport is in the fight which, pound for pound, steelhead concede to no other fish. Steelhead reward and frustrate sportsmen with stamina, direction changes and dogged attempts to throw the hook with aerial acrobatics.
It worked. Tsinghua did it. Not only did Han Feizi Junior graduate with a degree in computer science, he got the equivalent of Chinese language and Asian studies degrees as byproducts. The old man was not just making things up. Han Feizi Junior is now the luminous being, the unicorn I had been looking for in my investment banking career – the perfectly bilingual and bicultural creature, schooled in a highly quantitative field, with a demonstrated ability to do independent research. Thankfully, Junior has no interest in banking.
“Anadromous” is a word rarely used outside ichthyology. It describes fish born in freshwater, carried to the ocean as juveniles, reaching adult size in the ocean and then migrating back to their freshwater origins to spawn, completing the lifecycle. Salmon are the most well known example. Sturgeon as well. And some fish, like rainbow trout, have anadromous variants.
Salmon and steelhead can travel 3,000 miles from ocean feeding grounds to upriver spawning beds. They do not swim up just any river; salmon have an uncanny ability to find not just the exact stream of their birth but the exact section of the stream where they were hatched. Ichthyologists attribute this natal homing ability to olfactory imprinting and magnetic navigation.
The Fujianese are the most anadromous Chinese. Our diaspora are spread out in every nook and cranny of the world. We have cornered the market on America’s small town Chinese take-outs. We control business networks across South East Asia – from blue chip concerns like the Kuok Group (Shangri-la Hotels, Kerry Properties, Wilmar International) to unsavory scam centers in Cambodia.
Over the decades, strains of the Fujianese diaspora have completed the anadromous cycle. After WWII, the family patriarch returned to Fujian from Indonesia to help rebuild China. He was among many, the most illustrious of whom was Tan Kah Kee, founder of Xiamen University. Subsequent generations went abroad again. And now, the patriarch’s great grandson has just graduated from Tsinghua University. He is also among many as the popularity of mainland universities has surged among the Fujianese diaspora in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Paul McCartney wrote that the long and winding road will always lead to your door. Lu Xun’s most famous quote is about long and winding roads as well.
“Hope cannot be said to exist, nor not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually there were no roads to begin with, but when many people pass one way, a road is made.”
