This is a letter written by TANG Xiaoou (859), in 1999, the Chair of USTCAF then, calliing for donations to goodwill scholarship when it was set up.

Dear all:

In order to find out the situation of USTC students in great financial need and to discuss details of the AF Goodwill scholarship, upon the request of GB, I had a couple of meetings with Prof. Deng Guohua (USTC 595, director of registry), Ms. Ming Lu (USTC 774, director of student affair), and Ms. Qian Ruohua (vice director of student affair, founder of Hand-in-Hand project), on my third trip to USTC. I'm in great shock about the situation I found. I wish everyone receiving this letter would read through it.

When Ms. Lu and Ms. Qian talks about those needy students, I could see their eyes getting wet. I'm quite touched by their deep feeling toward the students, but didn't fully understand why they are so emotionally involved. After I read the letters from poor students (one of the translated letter is attached at the end), I understood everything.

To identify needy students, Ms. Lu and Ms. Qian have been very careful and spend a great deal of effort. They worked with the university canteen to monitor the spending of each student on daily meal. Since all the student canteen has set up the electronic credit system so that all students pay each meal through their student cards, it is very easy to calculate the spending of each student on food. For the past two months, they found that there are 103 students who eat more than 80 meals per month, but spend only 80 to 140 yuan per person. That translates into a little over one yuan per meal. Some of us may think this is not too bad. During this visit, I went to the student canteen myself for a lunch. The rice alone costs me one yuan, the dish (XiaoChao, which costs 0.6 yuan when I was in school) costs 3 yuan. So, a hundred yuan a month means, you have to eat only rice and salt pickle for every meal, everyday! Or have the so called free soup (which is basically the wash water) everyday! (To make sure these are truly needy students, not someone who spend more money on food, such as fruits, outside student canteen, they went to each class to talk to the class supervisor and students about each case.)

The teacher told me, some students don't want their classmates to know they are so poor, and eat so little every day, they either go to the canteen very early, or wait until everyone is gone. It's hard to imagine how one can survive the huge psychological pressure, eat so little, and still keep up with the tremendous study pressure at USTC.

USTC is trying her best to help all the students, and pledges that no student will discontinue study because of financial reasons. Most these poor students have received some financial aid on tuition, housing, which total 3600 Yuan per year for each student. The school has picked up the majority of the burden in helping poor students, and simply doesn't have enough resources to help all students for all the living expense. Having seen the difficult situation, some faculty and students started a volunteer campaign named Hand-in-Hand to raise money among campus students and teachers. The response is amazing. They raised 20k yuan in a short period of time. It's not a big number to many of us oversea alumni. But image the financial situation of those on campus students, who have to pay the high tuition themselves. They are simply sharing their food in their dish with their classmates. In a recent campaign, students sell their old books and donated all the proceedings of 3,800 yuan. Most student volunteers for the ÒHand-in-handÓ program use their own money to pay for the various spending, including making copies, buying various supplies. The USTC ÒHand-in-HandÓ program is such a great and unique project that it attracts nation-wide attention in the media, thus helped to expose this problem exists in all the college campuses around the country.

Growing number of students in financial trouble is not unique to USTC. A friend from Beida told me a similar story there. One student is too hungry to get into sleep, he went out to run hard until he is tired and can fell asleep. I'm very surprised by all these and I'm sure it's hard for many of us to imagine the situation. When we were in USTC, many of us were also from poor families. However, at that time even will off students have little money to spare. We are all poor and everything is cheap enough so that 20 yuan per month scholarship can keep us relatively well fed. Nowadays, many people are indeed getting rich in China, especially in coastal cities. However, most people in rural area are still as poor as before. Even in many big cities, many workers are laid off. The living condition of these families are much worse than before, since the price of everything has risen more than ten to twenty times compare to the time when we were in China. Some farmers and laid off workers get payed 100 to 200 rmb per month. They can't afford anything beside basic food. The students know that their whole family are borrowing money, saving every penny just for them to be able to continue school. A very bright USTC student from Jiansu scored 168 out of the 170 in college entrance math exam, basically finished every optional questions in the test. His father died recently, and his mother has to go to work where ever she can find a temporary job. She doesn't even have a permanent place to live. During the Chinese new year, she lived in the USTC dormitory with her son.

There are so many heartbreaking stories like this. This is a problem that we don't have enough resource to solve. The government and the society as a whole has to figure out a way to solve it. However, as part of the society, especially, as the well off part of the society who received the best free education while in China, we have our share of duty in this. At the very least, we should be able to help the people we know, those brothers and sisters at USTC. We are talking about the brightest students China can offer. These students are under great study pressure already, even without the financial burden. How can we let them go through such psycological and physical ordeal without doing anything.

Most of us were educated through the best preliminary school and the best middle school in our city. We then went to the best university China has. Most of us didn't need to pay anything for all these, then we all went to the US. Many of us probably realized by now that some best private high schools in the US cost more than most colleges there, and the best colleges cost more than US$20k a year. How much would our 17 years of best education cost?

The money you donated today is not simply spent. They will help your fellow sisters and brothers in USTC; they will warm hundreds of hearts, and those being helped now will continue to help future USTCers when they grow stronger.

We are now opening another Goodwill pledge board. Please let us know how much you would like to donate now or in the near future.

If you prefer, you can also donate directly to the "Hand-in-Hand" program at USTC

For a glimpse of the condition of some USTC students, I scanned two letters written by current students at USTC in thanking the "Hand-in-Hand" project. Here I briefly translate one of the letters. Due to my poor writing, most of the spirit in the original letter is lost. So please try to read the original letter in Chinese (here).

Thank you for taking time to care!

Xiaoou Tang (859)
July 6th, 1999