TWENTY years ago, while working in the rich black soil of the northeast, I came to know a Mr. Li. He was the blacksmith with the production team I worked on, the Heilongjiang Production & Construction Corps.His daughter, Li Yemei, is now a student at Beijing University. She had been admitted to China’s most famous university because of her outstanding achievements in sports. A marathon runner, she had won 13 championships in national and international competitions. In China, any athlete who has broken a world record or performed outstandingly in any of the three most important international events—the Olympic Games, the World Championships, or the World Cup—is given access to a university education without taking the usual entrance examination. Yemei had dreamed of attending Beijing University since she was a little girl, and that’s the university she chose to attend when she retired from professional competitions. TWENTY years ago, while working in the rich black soil of the northeast, I came to know a Mr. Li. He was the blacksmith with the production team I worked on, the Heilongjiang Production & Construction Corps. His daughter, Li Yemei, is now a student at Beijing University. She had been admitted to China’s most famous university because of her outstanding achievements in sports. A marathon runner, she had won 13 championships in national and international competitions. In China, any athlete who has broken a world record or performing outstandingly in any of the three most important international events-the Olympic Games, the World Championships, or the World Cup-is given access to a university education without taking the usual entrance examination. Yemei had dreamed of attending Beijing University before she was a little girl, and that’s the university she chose to attend when she retired from professional competitions.