Zhang Xifeng, a 17-year-old student at Hengshui High School of Hebei Province, went viral. In his speech on Anhui TV program Super Speaker, Zhang compared himself to a humble “country pig” and shared his ambition to “grab a city cabbage.” While he did not specify what “city cabbage” is, for a young man from a small town, the metaphor likely refers to a well-paid job and a wife from a middle-class family in a larger city.  The Hengshui High School he recently graduated from is known for high rate of admission to China’s top universities.   

 The “country pig chasing city cabbage” speech saw both praise and criticism online. Some said they understood and appreciated the boy’s ambitions to rise in the ranks of society through hard work, while others expressed concerns that his attitude tacitly glorifies achieving one’s goals by any means necessary, comparing him to Julien Sorel, the ferociously ambitious protagonist in Stendhal’s 1830 novel “The Red and the Black”.

China has a very long tradition of attaching great importance to academic success. But is climbing the social ladder the only purpose and indicator of academic success in ancient Chinese society?