Chinese teen in Alibaba maths finals sparks awe, controversy after beating MIT students
- Jiang Ping has become the subject of national curiosity after climbing past competitors from Stanford, Cambridge, and Tsinghua to reach the finals.
As a student at Lianshui Secondary Vocational School in eastern Jiangsu Province, Jiang has stood out among the roughly 800 finalists, a group that also includes students from University of Cambridge and Peking University. Vocational schools in China are generally considered to be for students whose grades are not good enough to be admitted by high schools, where students study and prepare to take the university entrance examination, or gaokao.
“Learning maths is bumpy, but every time I solve the problems, I feel quite happy,” Jiang told the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily in a video interview this month. “No matter what the future holds, I will keep learning [maths]. I have never thought of giving up.”
Jiang is the only person to have reached the final round who is not from an elite university either in China or overseas. She told Qilu Evening News that she chose the vocational school because her elder sister and some good friends study there.