Students gamble on looks to bring fortune
Hu Lisha, 16, would normally go to high school in the nearby city of Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi province. But she wanted to study dance, and her parents supported this goal.
After middle school she answered a newspaper advertisement for recruits to the European Style Modelling Agency school in Beijing. Admitted last year, she pays no tuition because agency owner Shi Wei, also from Jiangxi, waives tuition for anyone from her home province. Tuition at other schools is about 12,000 yuan (HK$11,280) a year.
Since Ms Shi opened the school in 1999 she has admitted 160 students including 36 boys, apparently willing to sacrifice a normal high school diploma for Beijing and the chance of a lucrative career that can pay up to 1,000 yuan a day. Eighty per cent of the students are from Jiangxi, a relatively poor province.
About 200,000 models work in China, and 10,000 are in Beijing. As China makes more products for the competitive open market, models are key in attracting trade exhibition viewers and livening up signing ceremonies and business conferences. Until schools such as European Style began to open over the past decade, models usually paid for private tutors.
Ms Shi, 20, encountered so many setbacks in her own career that she set up a school to help other prospective models, said her teacher, Wang Wu. At 16, after two years of training, Ms Shi won a nationwide Cultural Bureau and China Clothing Designers Association modelling contest but never attained the fame she had hoped for, Mr Wang said.
He said China's modelling industry was too disorganised to recognise talent and overseas modelling agents did not take Chinese models seriously.
'She didn't want people to suffer the same kind of fate,' Mr Wang, 40, said.
She and Mr Wang decided Beijing was the best market for models and rented an out of the way, unmarked military property just off Sanlitun Bar Street to hold classes as well as lodge students. Today 12 teachers give classes in dance, film, music and basic subjects such as English. Students learn not only to pose at standard-issue ribbon cuttings and new merchandise shows, but also to play the piano and speak in public.
Some students have ambitions for performing arts, and some are aiming for a film career. Twenty-year-old student Hu Kun said he planned return to his home town to become a dance teacher.
Only two per cent of applicants get into the school. Those admitted have little time to consider how lucky they are - students must abide by strict rules.
Rule No 1: No-one may leave campus alone; it could corrupt a student. Rule No 2: Students must be up at 6:30am for jogging, the first of classes that will run into late evening. Rule No 3: No smoking, drinking or falling in love. Rule No 4: Students must perform for the school to help it make money, and if they are a Jiangxi native receiving free tuition, they must pay the school back if possible after graduation.
Of the school's 400 graduates, three are modelling overseas, and others work in dance, film and local modelling. But Mr Wang the school was losing money. 'It's a kind of gamble for us,' he said.
