[Global Times] Fudan’s geeks bring reality to The Big Bang

Video clip gives four extra-bright students a huge fan base

 

Fudan’s geeks bring reality
to The Big Bang

[Global Times] 8&9,  Monday June 28, 2010

By Ye Jun
The hit American sitcom The BigBang Theory features four brilliant Caltech physicists with incredibly high IQs but terribly low EQs. For alltheir brains their social problems haveto be solved by their blonde waitress neighbor.
Recently four second-year students at the city’s prestigious Fudan University found themselves acclaimed on-line as the Shanghai equivalent of the Big Bang characters.
Roommates Xu Jian, Lu Yuanda, Zhang Kan, and Wang Xinyu won fame and popularity after their home-made video clips hit the Internet.
The video clips that turned the four into heroes overnight showed the students in their dorm at the university on Songhuajiang Road, Hongkou district.
The room is crammed with tech-savvy gadgets they made themselves, remote controlled fans and lights, a computer mainframe that looks like a circuit board, cable television, a radio-controlled model car carrying a television camera.
Add some background music, special effects, four bright young men and you have a hit.
It is a wonderland of science and technology.
“I’ve seen the videos. I think they are really special and talented people. I would never have imagined there’d be people like this close to me,” Jin Mei, a fourth-year accounting major at the same university told the Global Times.

Four smart lads

 But for the boys there is a big gap between the television world and reality.
While the television may had added spice to the word geek, their world is not too rare. They say they are just four smart lads who know about brightening their lives with specialized knowledge.
But at the same time they do take their girlfriends to the cinema, not the science museum, for dates.
“What we do may seem awesome to many but to people in our field, like our classmates, there’s nothing magical or special. The techniques are commonplace.
It’s just that we’ve publicly shown some of the things we can do,” Xu Jian told the Global Times.
“There are things we have in common with the characters in the comedy. We all have a strong interest in and passion for science but the similarities end there,” Zhang Kan, the only one of the four who has actually watched the The Big Bang Theory, told the Global Times.
“Television shows inevitably exaggerate to achieve their desired effects, but we are normal people,” said Lu Yuanda, who intends to catch up with the show during the summer vocation.
The four have had their IQs tested online but don’t take the results seriously.
“We are not geniuses, and contrary to many people’s assumptions now, I wouldn’t say we have big problems dealing with people,” said Lu. Their supervisor Ou Ruofeng, agrees. “They are not single-minded bookworms as far as I know. They take an active part in school activities and have good interpersonal skills.”
Their overnight popularity was unexpected.
“The sole intention to upload the video clips on the Internet was to share our knowledge and experience with other interested people,” Xu Jian said.
But along with the media attention now are messages from girls who are interested in meeting them. Some of the messages talk about romance. The most surprising feedback is from other university students saying the video has re-ignited their passion for university life again. “Some of them said they would probably have, otherwise, drowned in the tediousness of academic life, played truant or idled away their time here,” Xu Jian said.
“I feel flattered reading people’s comments. I think the media coverage has brought us a great opportunity to exchange ideas with others,” said Lu Yuanda.

Amazing gadgets

The four students have not applied for patents for the amazing gadgets they have created mainly because they do not regard them as real inventions. “What we did was just applied what we learned in class to real life and used our knowledge to make life more convenient and fun,” Lu said.
Even so, Xu Jian, who created a software program to help students to pronounce English, has been contacted by a remote education company interested in his invention. “There’s just interest rather than actual deals being discussed at present,” Xu told the Global Times. The four were exempted from the National College Entrance Examination because of their high scores in national level scientific competitions. The four met each other through QQ, the popular Chinese instant messaging service, before they were admitted to the famous university.
When their freshman year ended, they asked to be assigned to the same dormitory.
The university usually insists that students with different majors become roommates for the first year. Despite some cultural differences – mainly between the north and south – they enjoy living with each other.
“It was a deep interest in science and technology that brought us together.
We have a lot in common, which makes sharing a room really fun for us, but we also have individual strengths and are in some ways complimentary in character,” said Xu Jian, the dorm leader.
They meet, dine together and take cycling trips. “We do many things together, and we are probably known as a group, but that doesn’t mean we are isolated from other people. We get along well with others,” Wang Xinyu said.

Name: Xu Jian (aka Jianjian)
Age: 20
Native Place: Wuhan, Hubei Province
Specialty: Computer programming and video making
Hobbies: Playing the flute and photography
Relationship Status: Single

Xu Jian is the dorm head, the spokesman for the four and responsible for running the dorm from day to day. Xu’s ascent to this position came about by a tacit agreement among the four – there was no democratic poll. He describes himself as having a “bad guy” face which means he is often stopped and asked to show his ID card by security guards. He is diligent, earnest, meticulous and persistent.
“He’s the kind of person who believes that anything worth doing is worth doing well,” said Lu, adding that Xu would pay close attention to trivial requirements for a thesis like the spacing needed between paragraphs. “If there is anybody, he is the perfectionist among us,” Wang told the Global Times.
Born into a family with fairly strong academic atmosphere – Xu’s father is a prominent bridge engineer, Xu showed his talent in programming at junior high school when he used a classmate’s electronic dictionary to develop a program to solve simple equations.
Xu keeps a small pet turtle.

Name: Lu Yuanda (aka Laoda)
Age: 20
Native Place: Shenyang, Liaoning Province
Specialty: Electronics, lighting
Hobby: Making gadgets
Relationship Status: Single (a “blank page” when it comes to romance)
Lu Yuanda is the sort of guy who can walk past a light bulb and from very subtle observations tell immediately if it is new or not. Wang, who met Lu in junior high school, told the Global Times how enthusiastic Lu was about electronics: “When we were playing in the mud, Laoda was playing with semi-conductors; when we were playing ball games, he was playing with semi-conductors; when we were playing video games, he was still playing with semi-conductors.” Lu confirmed he was born with a passion for electronics, “When I was little, I was not interested in the normal toys my friends liked but I would be fascinated by anything that moved or shone. Those things fascinated me from an early age.”
He still recalls vividly how thrilled he was when his mother brought him home a board with electric lights flashing in sequence. She had asked a colleague to make this for her son.
A real handyman Lu’s desk is scattered with electronic equipment and soldering irons.
Lu might come across as a nerd – he does not stop when he is working on a project. But underneath his scholarly appearance and demeanor lies a simple, sincere and warm heart. Lu is an on-call repairman and will never say no to anyone who asks for help.

Name: Zhang Kan (aka Kange)
Age: 21
Native Place: Qingdao, Shandong Province
Specialty: Computer programming
Hobby: Desktop games
Relationship Status: Single (but he has had at least one girlfriend)
Zhang Kan reads extensively, has many good ideas and, according to his roommates, will break with traditions. One of his proudest inventions is a hand-held computer. It is the size of an electronic dictionary but functions as an ordinary computer and costs a twentieth the price of a full-sized version.
Zhang’s interest in computers was sparked when his family bought a computer when he was in the third grade. His family was strict and he was told not to run around the house and remain quiet.
So he sat at the computer. His computer skills sharpened and at times he taught his teachers aspects of computing.
But Zhang is far from being socially inept. Wang calls him an “expert in relationships” and says that many of Zhang’s friends, male and female, confide in him about relationship problems.

Name: Wang Xinyu (aka Xinyu)
Age: 21
Native Place: Shenyang, Liaoning Province
Specialty: Student affairs
Hobby: Reading poetry
Relationship Status: He has a girlfriend
Wang Xinyu is the most gregarious of the four. He told the Global Times: “I might not be as good as the other in terms of proficiency in electronic engineering but I am better at mixing with people and making friends.”
Wang’s interest in electronic engineering go back to his senior high school years, when he participated in a school sponsored workshop which led him into the wonderful world of laboratory experiments.
In the students’ union Wang is the head of the department of social practices.
He is also a member of a poetry society at Fudan University, and an active participant in art and student activities.
He represented the university on a Hunan television program.
“He’s also prudent and good at keeping things in order, but kind of in a different way from Xu,” said Lu.
Wang will lead a group of 10 teaching in Yunnan Province this summer, as part of a volunteer project he’s been involved in for which they have collected money and books.