Shanghai Tin Ka Ping Middle School: a school donated by an old man from Hong Kong

Basic facts

This piece is about a school that was "donated by somebody else". The donor was called Tin Ka Ping, and in his life he donated more than three hundred schools.

1997: No. 185 Jingfeng Road

In 1997, the year of Hong Kong's return, a new middle school opened at No. 185 Jingfeng Road in Zhabei District.

It was a through school (junior plus senior), recruiting city-wide and from overseas, partly boarding.

The money came from two directions:

• the Hong Kong industrialist Tin Ka Ping gave the funds;
• the Zhabei District Government invested.

This was a typical model of Chinese basic education in the 1990s: an overseas native gave the money, the local government gave the land and the staffing, and together they ran a "So-and-so Middle School". Tin Ka Ping was one of those who gave the most.

Who Tin Ka Ping was

Tin Ka Ping (1919–2018), a native of Meizhou in Guangdong, was Hong Kong's "king of artificial leather".

He left school at sixteen to go into business, later made leather in Hong Kong and brought it to the front of the trade. But what made him famous was not business; it was donating schools.

In 1982 he set up the Tin Ka Ping Foundation, and over the thirty-odd years after that he donated more than three hundred schools — universities, middle schools, primary schools and kindergartens, in every province of the country. Many cities have a "Tin Ka Ping Middle School".

The thing people remember best happened in 2005.

That year he sold the villa he had lived in for 37 years and gave the HK$20 million it fetched entirely to schools. He himself moved into a rented flat.

A reporter asked him why, and he said something very plain:

"China's hope lies in education."

An old man of eighty-six selling his own home to build classrooms for other people's children. The story went round Chinese educational circles widely, and gave the three characters "Tin Ka Ping" a weight beyond the sums he gave.

When he died in 2018, several hundred schools across the country bore his name — all of them evidence that he had lived.

How the school has done

In its early years Tin Ka Ping Middle School took the road of "borrowing strength".

In May 1998 the school was converted to the public-run with private support status of a district key middle school. In March 2006 it was converted again, to a private school.

Two conversions in eight years. That is not common among Zhabei's schools, and it reflects the repeated experiments with the system of Shanghai's basic education from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s.

It has one more rare arrangement: a Korean division.

From January 2006 to July 2012 the school ran a "Korean division", taking Korean students only. A Korean division inside a Zhabei middle school — the fact itself says how hot international education in Shanghai was in those years.

"Education for Success": the same theory as at Zhabei No. 8

Among the school's guiding ideas there is one sentence worth setting out on its own:

The school takes the theory of "Education for Success" as its guide, and "independent learning, experiencing success, respecting differences, promoting development" as its philosophy of running the school.

"Education for Success" was created at Zhabei No. 8 Middle School. Its author is Liu Jinghai, and its core is that "success is the mother of success" — let pupils who find learning hard taste success first, and then climb step by step.

The theory started at Zhabei No. 8 in the 1980s and was later spread across the country.

Tin Ka Ping Middle School was founded in 1997 and took the theory straight as its guide — which shows that by the late 1990s "Education for Success" was already a signboard of Zhabei education, and a newly founded school was willing to hang that signboard up.

That a district's educational theory should reach the point where other schools take it as their guide is very rare.

A school with very obvious "specialities"

Tin Ka Ping Middle School's special projects, listed, look very like a "menu of all-round education":

"2 works permanently kept by the Shanghai Municipal Archives" — that item is especially interesting. Films made by the pupils of a middle school went into the municipal archives. That is not something an "interest club" can do.

What a donated school has left behind

Tin Ka Ping Middle School's history in Zhabei is not long — from 1997 to now, less than thirty years.

But three layers in it are worth recording:

The first layer is one man's goodwill. Tin Ka Ping selling his house to run schools was not a phrase out of a press release; he really did it. Every brick of this school came from the savings of an old man in Hong Kong.

The second layer is an experiment with the system. Public-run with private support, then private: two conversions in eight years. Zhabei's educational reform has left its marks on this school.

The third layer is the spread of a theory. "Education for Success" set out from Zhabei No. 8, came to Tin Ka Ping Middle School, and went on to the whole country. That a district's educational experience can grow into a tree — that is the confidence of Zhabei education.

Connections

• Sub-district：Linfen Road Subdistrict
• See also：Linfen Road Subdistrict, Zhabei No. 8 Middle School, Yangbo Private Middle School, Shibei Middle School

Sources: that Shanghai Tin Ka Ping Middle School was founded in 1997, donated by the Hong Kong industrialist Tin Ka Ping and built with investment from the Zhabei District Government, as a partly boarding full-time through school recruiting city-wide and from overseas, covering more than 40 mu with more than 20,000 square metres of floor space; that it was converted in May 1998 to a district key middle school of the public-run-with-private-support kind, and in March 2006 to a private school; and that from January 2006 to July 2012 it ran a Korean division taking Korean students; that the school is guided by the theory of "Education for Success" and takes "independent learning, experiencing success, respecting differences, promoting development" as its philosophy, with "know yourself, surpass yourself, give of yourself" as its motto; and that its specialities include film and video (a Shanghai film-and-television speciality school, a national top hundred school television station, 2 works kept by the Shanghai Municipal Archives), robotics (once representing Shanghai in the United States and taking first and third places), Odyssey of the Mind, aerobics, rugby, fine art and model boats and cars, are based on the school pages of Shanghai Zhongkao, Youxiao and the School Directory, and on the admissions brochure on Shangnaxue (Grade B); that Tin Ka Ping (1919–2018) was a Hong Kong industrialist of Meizhou, Guangdong, origin, that he set up the Tin Ka Ping Foundation in 1982 and donated more than three hundred schools, and that in 2005 he sold the house he had lived in for 37 years and gave the proceeds to schools, saying "China's hope lies in education", are based on the public material of the Tin Ka Ping Foundation and on media reports (Grade B; the details of "selling the villa and moving into a rented flat" are a widely reported version, the exact sum and date being subject to the Foundation's records, and are marked Grade C); that "Education for Success" was put forward at Zhabei No. 8 Middle School with "success is the mother of success" at its core is set out in this book's piece on Zhabei No. 8 Middle School. See Appendix 4 for the full bibliography.