The Core Pain and Strength of Big Brother

The Imperial Examination Tradition: Education as a Way Out

To understand why Wei Qian is willing to risk his life, we first need to understand how Chinese people have traditionally viewed education.

Since the imperial examination system was established during the Sui and Tang dynasties, studying and taking the exams became one of the main ways for people from ordinary families to move up in society.

For many families, education was never an individual matter. The entire family would work together to support one person’s studies. Over time, this created a strong cultural belief in the importance of education.

In other words, many Chinese people have grown up with the idea that studying can change not only one person’s future, but the fate of an entire family.

Wei Qian’s determination to return to school may seem like a personal desire for a more respectable life. But underneath that desire is something much deeper: a poor young man’s hope that his fate can still be changed.

He has no family to depend on, yet he instinctively believes that studying may be the only way for him to escape his difficult life.

At its heart, Wei Qian’s dream is about dignity. One reason he cannot give up school is that education may be his only chance to escape the feeling that he was born to be less important than others.

Why Does Wei Qian Choose Underground Boxing?

The way Wei Qian tries to return to school is also meaningful.

When his homeroom teacher finds him, and Grandma Song even considers selling tea eggs to pay for his education, Wei Qian cannot accept the idea of letting an elderly woman support the family.

Instead, he travels south to fight in underground boxing matches.

This choice tells us two things.

First, Wei Qian understands how expensive returning to school will be. He does not want anyone else to carry that burden for him.

Second, he is willing to be cruel to himself. In his mind, risking his life for a chance to study is worth it.

Wei Qian’s toughness is not simple recklessness. When he worked as a fighter, he once became addicted to the sense of value that violence gave him. But he eventually turned away from that life.

He understood that taking the right path was harder than taking the wrong one—and that people who chose the right path were stronger.

Underground boxing was only a desperate way to survive. Returning to school was the real goal.

His determination to study is built on a quiet but powerful belief: in China, education can give people a chance to move beyond the class they were born into.

In many other places, ordinary people, especially those from poor backgrounds, have very few ways to change their social position.

But since the beginning of the imperial examination tradition, China has carried a unique social ideal: even someone from the lowest level of society might change their future through an examination—a process that was legal, recognized, and accepted by society.

This idea was not created by a few inspiring stories. It was reinforced by more than a thousand years of history, passed down through generations of families, and eventually became part of the Chinese cultural imagination.

This is a special kind of hope.

It gives people with almost no options a path they can see.

When Wei Qian carries boxes at the docks or fights underground, he still holds on to one thought:

As long as I can return to school, I may still become someone different.

That thought itself is a form of tenderness. It keeps a person from completely losing hope, even in the darkest situation.

This hope is not about waiting for a reward in the next life. It is a promise that belongs to this life.

It does not require someone to believe in a god or belong to a certain group. It only asks them to study.

The idea that “anyone can try” was rare and precious in the premodern world.

This hope of moving beyond one’s social class is still familiar to readers who understand the pressure of education in China. The gaokao, China’s national college entrance examination, is still seen as an important path for many young people. It represents much of the traditional Chinese belief in hard work and self-improvement.

When someone realizes that this opportunity may truly be open to people from poor families, they may hold on to it with a strength that others cannot easily understand.

Wei Qian’s way of protecting his chance to return to school is extreme and painful. But it carries the hopes of many people who have struggled at the bottom of society.

And yet, this is not a light or easy kind of tenderness.

Wei Qian’s tenderness is marked by blood.

He takes responsibility for Xiao Yuan and Xiao Bao at a very young age. He carries the weight of a family long before he is ready.

His hope is not bright or cheerful. It is the strength to keep going in the darkness, to grit his teeth, and to refuse to bend.

Perhaps this is also a reflection of how deeply many Chinese people value the chance to study.

Education is treated as something worth giving everything for—not because it is easy, but because it is difficult and precious.

A foreign reader may find it hard to understand why someone would accept a potentially deadly price just to return to school.

But for many Chinese readers, that school represents an old promise: the possibility of moving beyond one’s birth, and the chance for even a poor young person to become someone important.

That is why Wei Qian’s story is so moving.

It is not simply because he eventually succeeds. It is because, before there is any sign of success, he is already willing to risk everything for the possibility of a different life.

Perhaps this is the tenderness and hope hidden deep inside his character.

It is not soft. It is wounded, heavy, and hard-won. But it is still tenderness.