Pan Zhonghua majored in automotive machinery manufacturing, and after completing his doctoral studies in the United States, he worked in Detroit for several years. In the mid-90s, when China's automobile manufacturing industry began to flourish, he resolutely returned to China.

He is a devout Christian and a typical polytechnic man, who goes to church for worship and volunteer services on weekends in addition to work. When he was thirty-eight or nine years old, he was introduced by others and married Shen Xiaohui, a high school math teacher. When her daughter Pan Wenjin was born, Pan Zhonghua was already in her early forties, Shen Xiaohui was not young, and her health was not good, so she resigned from her job and concentrated on taking care of her daughter at home.

The Pan family bought a small three-story villa in the suburbs of Beijing, where the house price was less than 5,000 yuan per square meter at that time.

Pan Wenjin is a very smart and sensible little girl, since the age of three, her parents have taken her to church with her, attend children's Sunday school, sing hymns, take English Bible study classes, and by the age of five or six, she can recite the entire Bible in English.

When Pan Wenjin grew up to school age, the problem came that her family's villa was so far away from the city school that even if her mother drove her to pick her up every day, it would take three or four hours to go back and forth.

Pan Zhonghua and his wife went to the city to inspect more than a dozen primary schools, but they did not find anything satisfactory to them. As an old turtle and a Christian, Pan Zhonghua also has a worry, that is, he feels that some of the educational concepts of the current school are contrary to Christian teachings, and he is worried that the chaos and chaos of the outside world will affect the peace and purity of his daughter's heart, so that the child will be indifferent to the belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. He firmly believes that his daughter will serve humanity in the future according to God's will, and that if the child goes to school, he may spend more time redirecting the child back to God's presence in the future.

Xiao Jin's mother, who has been growing up under the domestic public education system and has been working in public high schools for a long time, is quite conflicted about the problem of her child's education.

The two studied and discussed Xiao Jin's education together, but they never came up with a good solution.

Once, Pan Zhonghua went on a business trip abroad and bought back a set of textbooks for family education in foreign Christian churches, and he and his wife carefully studied this set of textbooks, and felt that the content was simple and simple, which could not only satisfy the children's intellectual curiosity, but also penetrate the ideas of the Bible. After careful consideration, they decided to adopt a homeschooling method for Xiao Jin, with her mother teaching Wen Jin at home, in Pan Zhonghua's view, the only way to practice God's love and God's Word more in communication with children.

Wen Jin's intellectual curiosity is very strong, learning things are also very fast, her mother is a teacher, teaching her daughter is even more sparing, she combines domestic primary school textbooks with foreign Christian family education textbooks, synchronous teaching, at night after work, will tutor her daughter to read some Chinese or English extracurricular books.

Wen Jin followed her mother to learn all the textbooks in primary schools in China before she was ten years old, and she also learned a lot of foreign textbooks, and read a lot of extracurricular books.

Mom began to be anxious again, according to the child's learning progress, she could barely teach Zai Wenjin for a few years in science courses, and the liberal arts courses, especially English, were no longer able to teach. With the help of the church, Mom and Wen Jin joined a "family education cooperative" that consisted of several Christian families in their community.

This is equivalent to a very small house church school, and the content taught is based on the seven arts of Christian classical education (grammar, rhetoric, logic, algebra, music, geometry, astronomy), and some school education content such as history, biology, physics, and chemistry is added. This ultra-small house church school has a Steering Meeting (core decision-making committee), which is responsible for selecting suitable educational resources for children, including some teaching materials and books, formulating syllabuses, assessing classes, etc., according to the parents' educational background, with qualified parents serving as teachers for a certain subject, and other parents responsible for eating, organizing, and going out.

It just so happens that most of the families in this "family education cooperative program" are from the United States, so the classes are taught directly in English, and one of the mothers is a graduate of Yale University in the United States, which undoubtedly strengthens the teaching staff of this small Christian church home school. The child only attends classes three days a week, and spends the rest of the time at home reading books and completing homework, which satisfies Wen Jin's desire to study to a greater extent, because Wen Jin has a lot of time to read her favorite books.

Later, Wen Jin's younger brother was born, and her mother had to devote most of her energy to taking care of her younger brother, and she could no longer teach in the home school, and she didn't even have time to take care of Xiao Jin, so Xiao Jin could only go to the Christian home school in the community by herself, which not only did not reduce her enthusiasm for learning, but made her learning momentum more and more fierce.

And just like that, before I knew it, another three years had passed.

One day, Bill, an American father who graduated from Harvard University in the homeschool, came to the house and found Wen Jin's father, he told Wen Jin's father: "Your daughter is a genius, she is very smart, I think that our family education program has limited the development of the child, we should send her to the United States, the United States has the best private boarding high schools in the world, and many of these top high schools have church backgrounds, the courses there are very rich, and the teachers are all first-class scholars." She will definitely be able to have a greater harvest there......"

Wen Jin, who was sitting on the sofa, listened to Mr. Bill talk about herself, so she gently closed the book in her hand and listened intently to the chatting of the adults, she heard Mr. Bill introduce the American boarding high school in a colorful voice: "Oh, Karl (Karl, Pan Zhonghua's English name), you can't imagine how important my high school was to my life, it can be said to be the best time of my life. I graduated from the famous G College in the United States, a historic private boarding high school in Massachusetts, located in a green area away from the city, covering hundreds of acres of land, with lakes, mountains, and woods. There are only 400 students in the school, but there are nearly 200 courses, including astronomy, economics, computer engineering, economics, religion, literature, music theory, art history, physics, biology, theology, law, etc., from humanities, to natural sciences, to arts. The teacher-student ratio is 7:1, and there are only thirteen or fourteen students in each class, and the teachers and classmates sit around the round table to study and discuss some academic issues together, just like our home school. There are also a lot of clubs and sports teams at school, and everyone plays together after class, which is a really good experience......

Pan Zhonghua listened to Mr. Bill's words, thought for a long time, and did not immediately agree, although he loved his daughter very much, but he knew that the tuition fee for going to a private boarding high school in the United States was very expensive.

Pan Zhonghua's annual salary of hundreds of thousands of yuan is indeed enough for their family to maintain the living standard of a middle-class family, however, if Xiao Jin really wants to go to the United States to study in a private high school, he will basically spend all his annual salary every year, and nearly two million yuan will be spent in four years of high school. Besides, Pan Zhonghua is about to retire in four or five years, and Wen Jin has to go to college in the United States after finishing high school, which is a very considerable expense, which is simply a mountain of food for a family like theirs.

Looking at Wen Jin's yearning expression, Pan Zhonghua asked tentatively: "Bill, you know, when I was in college in the United States, I basically relied on scholarships and worked outside to earn some money. Is it possible for a Chinese kid like Xiao Jin to get a grant or scholarship at a private high school? ”

Mr. Beale shook his head and said, "Oh, basically impossible. Most private high schools in the U.S. receive donations from alumni just like universities, and there are many prestigious private high schools that have large funds, but they are not as generous as American universities. First of all, public high schools in the United States are completely free, and those who are willing to spend a lot of extra money to send their children to private high schools in the United States must be families who have both money and value their children's education; Second, because the top private high schools in the United States are very small, usually only a few hundred students, however, the number of outstanding applicants from all over the world every year is dozens or even hundreds of times the number of students they plan to enroll, and they have no need to use scholarships to attract students and parents. In addition, boarding high schools in the United States have a very small proportion of international students, and even if individual schools set up grants, they will not be considered for international students. At least as far as I know, there are very few such precedents. ”

Seeing off Mr. Bill, Wen Jin felt an unprecedented sense of loss, if it weren't for today's conversation, she wouldn't have known that there was such a desirable school in the world. She never went to real school, and she longed to know what school was like; As she grew up, she wanted to have more friends, but on the other hand, she was reluctant to increase the financial burden on her family.

When Mom and Dad tactfully expressed their reluctance to let her go to the United States, although she was disappointed, she never mentioned the past high school in the United States.

Wen Jin was even more silent than before, and Shen Xiaohui found that she often hid alone in her room to surf the Internet, secretly browsing the websites of those American high schools, seeing any interesting content, and laughing silly there, whenever this happened, Shen Xiaohui's heart felt sour.

Wen Jin is a child after all, she has been sad for a while, and her mood seems to be gradually getting better. Lately, she always talks to someone on the phone, and she chats for a long time. Shen Xiaohui wondered in her heart, there were only six or seven students in the family school in their community, and usually, Wen Jin rarely talked to them on the phone, who was she chatting with?

Shen Xiaohui knew that her daughter was simple-minded and worried that she had met some bad teenager on the Internet. One day, she finally couldn't help it anymore and asked her daughter, "Wen Jin, tell your mother, who have you been chatting with recently?" Talking for so long every day? ”

Wen Jin smiled mysteriously and said, "It's a sister......"

Shen Xiaohui asked with some curiosity, "How did you meet?" ”

Wen Jin has always been an honest child, she said, "Hmm...... I met ...... in the sticker"

"What's the post? Wen Jin, there are a lot of unreal things on the Internet, you can't easily disclose your phone number, personal information or anything to others. ”

Wen Jin hesitated for a moment, and said to her mother: "Mom, I met this sister on an SSAT (equivalent to the American high school entrance examination) post bar, and that post bar is full of American high school parties, and there are many great gods, and that sister is a great god." ”

Shen Xiaohui couldn't understand what her daughter was saying at all, so she simply pulled over a chair and sat down in her daughter's room, asking, "What is the SSAT?" You children's Martian language, mom is getting more and more incomprehensible. ”

Wen Jin smiled: "Mom, ......" She bit her lip before saying: The SSAT is an American test, and you must get a high score in this test before you can go to a top boarding high school in the United States. ”

Mom understood, Wen Jin still didn't give up on going to the United States to study in high school, she asked: "What does the American High School Party mean?" ”

Xiao Jin said: "We all call the children who go to high school in the United States the American High School Party now. ”

The mother touched her daughter's hair and said, "Mom knows that you still want to go to the United States to study, what is the name of the sister you met in the post bar?" Is she also studying in the United States? ”

Wen Jin said: "That big god sister is called Rose in the Wind, she just got admitted to an American high school this year, and she won't go to the United States until late August." She is a god in the post bar, because she was admitted to school A, one of the Little Ivy League in the United States, this school is particularly difficult to admit, and I heard her say that only two students were admitted to Chinese mainland this year. ”

Shen Xiaohui felt very interesting and asked, "Oh? There's still a little ivy? It's funny. What else did my sister say to you? ”

The corners of Wen Jin's mouth tugged downward, lowered his head and was silent, some crystal tears flashing in his eyes. Shen Xiaohui knew that Rose in the Wind must be like Mr. Bill, describing a beautiful picture of an American high school to her daughter, and Wen Jin understood that her parents did not support her to go to high school in the United States at this stage, so she was unhappy.

At this time, Pan Zhonghua walked into Wen Jin's room, saw her daughter's aggrieved look, and asked her, "What's wrong with Wen Jin?" Why are you unhappy when you talk to your mother? ”

As soon as she heard her father's words, Wen Jin cried aggrievedly, "Wow-". The mother hurriedly came over and hugged her daughter and said, "Baby, don't cry, you have grown up, if you have anything on your mind, tell your mother and father, let's discuss it together, okay?" ”

Wen Jin sobbed and cried for a long time before she stopped her tears, and her nose still twitched and said, "Mom, Dad, I really want to go to the United States for high school......"

Shen Xiaohui said: "But you are still young, and you have never left home, and your parents are not worried that you will go to the United States alone." ”

Wen Jin said: "Mom, I'm thirteen years old, and I've really grown up. I heard from my older brothers and sisters in the post bar that when you come to the United States, as long as you study hard and strive to get the best grades, you can get a full scholarship when you apply to American universities. Mr. Bill also said that American universities will give scholarships to Chinese children, right? Mom, I promise that even if American universities only give scholarships to one Chinese child, that child will definitely be my ......."

Dad saw that Wen Jin was so determined to study abroad, and it would be too cruel to blindly dampen her enthusiasm, so he said: "Wen Jin, Mom and Dad will do their best to meet your wishes, but Dad also has two small requests......"

Wen Jin listened to his father's words, immediately wiped a handful of tears, his eyes flashed with hope and joy, and said, "Dad, say it." ”

Dad said: "The first requirement is that you can only be admitted to the top ten American boarding high schools before your parents allow you to go to the United States, because you are still young, if you go to an ordinary high school in the United States, our family is not worth the price of separation; The second requirement is that the high school must have a church background, because we want you to receive the blessings and gifts of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout your life. ”

Wen Jin listened to her father's words, and laughed happily before the tears in the corners of her eyes were wiped away, and said, "Well, Dad, don't worry!" I'll be able to do it. ”

Once they had made up their minds, the family got to work. So, from this day on, Xiao Jin brushed the TOEFL and SSAT at home every day, sent WeChat to ask Sister Dashen if she didn't understand, and regularly sent the recordings of her TOEFL essays and speaking exercises to her sister for guidance. Sister Dashen also recommended a lot of good learning resources to her and taught her some learning methods, and Wen Jin's self-study improved by leaps and bounds.

Wen Jin was originally a bilingual education since she was a child, and she read a lot of English, and with the help of God's help, Sister Rose in the Wind, she got high scores on the TOEFL and SSAT exams in one fell swoop. When the big god sister announced Wen Jin's results in the post bar, she immediately became the new god worshiped by a group of American high school parties.

Next, Wen Jin wrote the application essay seriously, and then asked the "great god" sister and Mr. Bill to help her put forward amendments over and over again. She also took the initiative to contact the interviewers of several schools she applied to and conducted interviews online.

On March 10, the day when American boarding schools issued admission notices, Wen Jin got her wish to get admission letters from two top private high schools, and both of them have church backgrounds. Wen Jin compared and compared, and finally chose the A school where Sister Dashen was located.