When Zhuo Ke passed the entrance exam for Hunan university in 1998, his home village exploded in celebration. He comes from a poor mountainous area near Leshan in Sichuan province , where most children graduate from middle school if they're lucky.
An outstanding and diligent student, Zhuo obtained high enough marks to enter the economics and computer faculty of a top provincial university.
But life there was not the paradise he had imagined. His parents had borrowed heavily to pay the fees, leaving him with no money to join his fellow students in sports and socialising. Instead, he worked alone in front of his computer, isolated and burdened by a sense of inferiority at being the son of a poor farmer.
When the time came for the final exams in 2002, he studied hard but scored 19.5 points, just 0.5 below the 20 he needed, with the result that he left university without a degree, deepening his sense of inferiority.
He obtained a job in Guangdong but found that his salary was 2,000-3,000 yuan a month less than those with a degree and that, after paying his rent and living costs, he was left with almost nothing. How different life was from the way he had imagined it at college.
As he stood in a crowded, smelly bus on his way to work, he looked out the window enviously at the smart new cars and well-dressed people inside. His sense of bitterness grew.