My Ten Years at TJU—Zhu Shan

Editor’s Note: Zhu Shan, a PhD student, won the Tianjin University Outstanding Student Model Award, the highest campus award given to students at TJU. Zhu is a researcher who has published more than a dozen papers with impact factors adding up to 82. He is a science writer who wrote for several scientific magazines and websites such as Science Popularization of China, VICE, and Guoke.com. He is also a world traveler and has been to 25 countries. He is nicknamed “conch” because beneath his calm surface, you can hear the roar of the sea.

My name is Zhu Shan. I’m a doctor, and also a science writer.

Ten years have passed since I entered Tianjin University’s School of Material Science in 2009.

After completing my undergraduate study, I was offered the chance to do successive postgraduate and doctoral studies and I took it, studying nanomaterials under the guidance of Professor Li Jiajun and Professor Zhao Naiqin . A major challenge in this field is constantly exploring and testing many programs, and various problems may emerge from any one of these programs. Most of the time, you don't know what went wrong, and neither do your classmates, seniors or even mentors.

I think I’m the lucky one to have issued more than a dozen papers whose impact factors added up to 82.

You may say that I have done a relatively good job as a researcher. I have won two National Awards for doctors and was elected as the winner of the Student Science Award with the most votes.

"Go and Write" Regardless of the Venue

I occasionally wrote essays but not too often. About two years ago, I began to treat writing seriously. One late night, I was on my way back home from a party. The moon was particularly bright that night. As I walked over a bridge and felt the moonlight shine on me, a voice sounded in my mind (maybe it was my own, or it might not have been). The voice said: "Go and write." To be honest, it seems crazy and unbelievable as I write this.

Later, I read Murakami Haruki's autobiography "My profession is a novelist" and saw him describe his chance to start writing. When he was 29, he went to watch a baseball game. At that time, a baseball player hit a home run. He looked at the flying baseball and suddenly had a thought-- " I should start writing novel”. His first work "Hear the Wind Sing" came out soon thereafter . When I came to this part, I was shocked how similar his experience was to my own. You might think it a little bit shameless to claim to have had a similar experience with a well-known writer. Whatever!

Then it started. At first, I started an official account on WeChat and wrote randomly. For each article, there were no more than one thousand readers. To attract more fans, I opened a column on Zhihu (Zhihu, a popular Chinese question and answer website similar to Quora) called "Simplified Electrochemistry" and shared some professional and academic opinions and ideas on it. I was surprised by tens of thousands of likes my column received. It gave me the feeling of being a Zhihu celebrity.

Then somehow, I got in touch with Guokr (an online knowledge community) and began to write on it. The writing went quite well. Many of my articles got more than 100 thousand likes and the cumulative reading number has reached millions. Best of all, I get paid!

Gradually, I began writing manuscripts for various magazines. I have written about the love and hatred of medieval scholars for Science Popularization of China, the travel notes on drinking in European cities for VICE, and the history of nanomaterials for Junior Science.

I am not picky about the media.

Travelling on a Shoestring

These days, travelling seems to be a must-do choice, whether people are rich or poor, young or old.

A young and poor guy as I am, I have managed to visit 25 countries, the traveling distance as long as circling the earth along the equator for a dozen times. Some trips were for business, like going to the United States to do undergraduate graduation design, or learning about nanometer devices in Israel for months, or attending a joint training program in France for two years. However, sometimes I took crazy moves in life. I once built a house in the rainforest and tried swimming in the Dead Sea. I nearly froze to death in a Norwegian fjord and felt nothing was meaningful in the burning sun in Santorini, Greece.

I made the best of things when travelling on a budget. Once I lost my way in the southern jungle of Malaysia, and I could do nothing but to wait for a care to pass by. Finally I met a car. What a car it was! All the windows were gone. The original seats were gone and now were nothing but a row of iron shelves. Only half of the roof remained. The hot and humid air of Southeast Asia was coming from all directions, wrapping you up like a transparent airbag. But I was still very happy that day because I had seen wild boar and elephants .

I am not so young now, and I still don’t have a lot of money, but I am still invigorated by travel.

Now, I have two big dreams. One is to make my research results realized. If this can be accomplished, it will definitely do good to the country and the people and my doctorate years will have made a difference. Another dream is to produce more popular science articles, in the hope that they will at least help people know something if not as grand as to inspire them.

I also have a small down to earth wish, that is to earn money and then raise a good-looking dog, preferably a Shiba Inu. But I have heard that pure breed Shiba Inu is very expensive and difficult to raise, I will think about it carefully.

Ten years have passed.

How many decades can one have in a lifetime, let alone the years between when you are 18 and 28?

Do I regretting spending my precious ten years at TJU?

No—never and ever.

Translated by Gao Han

Editors: Eva Yin & Doris Harrington