Alec Patton:

This episode starts with a mystery in elementary school in Beijing, a mystery about a garden.

Yinuo Li:

I remember there was one day when the students came and found out the plants were damaged and then they saw their other kids, right. Because the school has other kids. That’s our first location. So everybody said, “Okay, it must be them. They have destroyed it.” And then our science teacher was like, “Okay, that’s a very strong hypothesis. Why do you think?” He turned that into such a beautiful science project.

Yinuo Li:

And then there are other kids saying, “Oh yeah, maybe it’s not the other kids, maybe it’s the cat.” Okay, maybe because there’s a wild cat who jump around. Okay, so you think it’s the cat? And then there are other kids saying, “Okay. They’re playing basketball, there’s a basketball field. It must be the basketball, they throw it to it.” What the teacher end up doing is say, “Okay, let’s figure out this hypothesis, right?” If it’s a basketball, let’s try it. If you hit the plant with different balls, what the plant looks like. Then they actually did experiment and then ended up, they were saying, “Okay, it’s not a ball. It’s not from the ball.”

Yinuo Li:

And then they were saying, “Okay, is it from other kids?” Oh, other kids, you can go and ask them. And then they were saying, “Instead of going on and just blame them, how do you have that conversation?” That become an education thing. And then I think it ended up, they figure out, they think it’s probably the cat.

Alec Patton:

This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. And you just heard the voice of Yinuo Li, co-founder of ETU school in Beijing. And that science teacher she was talking about is typical of the teachers at ETU, project-based, innovative and able to turn a potential crisis into a learning opportunity for everyone. And that’s a good thing because since it opened in 2016, ETU has experienced more than its share of crises. We’ll get to that, but first, a bit about Yinuo.

Yinuo Li:

I was born in the late 70s in China. That’s right after China’s so called opening up, that happened in 1978. After my high school, I went to Tsinghua University, which is one of the top universities in China. I studied biology. And after I got my bachelor’s degree, I came to the states in 2000 to get my PhD in molecular biology at UCLA. And that finished in around 2004 and 2005.

Alec Patton:

And what do you remember about school, before university?

Yinuo Li:

A lot of hard work. I think now putting in a kind of big education context, there’s a very, very distinctive, so called East Asian culture of working for the test, I would say. But actually, interestingly speaking, compared to today’s education in China, our education is reasonably relaxed.

Alec Patton:

While she was studying at UCLA, Yinuo met her husband, Huajong, who was studying biology at Caltech. He left academia and joined an internet startup. After she got her PhD, Yinuo join McKinsey, the management consultancy, 2000, 2005. And in 2008, she moved back to China with her family. The family only stayed a few years before moving back to their home in Palo Alto, California. But during that time, something happened that would transform Yinuo’s life. She enrolled her eldest kid in preschool.

Yinuo Li:

I think when he was two, two-ish, I was looking for a preschool and that was this interesting preschool called Little Oak Tree. It doesn’t sound very fancy, but it was founded by this lady who was very remarkable. She’s probably 10, 15 years older than me. And she was a PhD anthropology from Yale University. And she was working with the UN offices and all that. And from that point, she took this very unusual path. I think around 2000 founded this preschool. And it’s very unique, so it’s a very children centered approach. And that’s my first exposure to, okay, there are people trying to do the right type of education in China.

Yinuo Li:

And then that’s why I think in 2014, so she was with this group, I think used to be quite active in Northern California, SVP, Social Venture Partners. They were looking to fund grassroot education projects in California. Her name is Wang Gan. I joined a trip with her in 2014 to visit some of the SVP grantees. And that was very much eye-opening for me, understanding, okay, what educators are thinking about or doing and what kind of effort are being made on education equity here in the US?

Yinuo Li:

I still remember, so they visited quite a few charter schools and also they visited this one school called Escuela Popular, which is one of the schools in San Jose I remember, basically open for mostly Mexican quote unquote illegal immigrants. So that school, the way they’re being wrong, the way they kind of treat their students with dignity and how successful they are in sending some of their graduates to great universities and change their life was very, very impressive. I still remember visiting that school, but that was the trip we took in 2014.

Alec Patton:

Then in 2015, the Gates Foundation asked if Yinuo was interested in directing their China office. She said no. A few months later the recruiter got back in touch and asked if she wanted to fly up to Seattle and meet Bill Gates. And she figured, why not? When they met, she asked him why he’d started the Gates Foundation. And he said it was because he realized there were huge global problems such as malaria, that weren’t getting investment because there was no money to be made by solving them. The conversation was more eye opening than Yinuo had anticipated.

Yinuo Li:

I was a pretty successful partner in McKinsey. I was being to different continents. I traveled to Europe to Japan, to all those different places, serve my clients. I always fly business class, as you can imagine. I had a reasonably successful business women life. I was pretty arrogant. I was like, “I’ve seen the world. I’ve seen it.” But I realized, okay, what I’ve seen in the sort of McKinsey world was very much I would say upper middle class world. That’s where most of our clients are functioning in this market economy that functions in developed country. And what he described is a world I sort of know exists, but I didn’t know it’s so massive. And I also didn’t know there was organizations trying to do things about it. And of course it’s also connected with my research roots, my background from my academic training. So yeah, I think that conversation really played a role in thinking this very differently.

Alec Patton:

So you took the job.

Yinuo Li:

Yeah, I did. I decided to take the job. And then of course my husband was quite supportive. That’s a big role because it is a step down for me financially. McKinsey partner was reasonably lucrative and it’s hard to compare with the salary level there. So after discussing that, we decided, we ended up moving back in 2016.

Alec Patton:

At this point, Yinuo and Huajong had three kids and the oldest was in kindergarten. In Beijing, he’d been going to Little Oak preschool. Now he was part of the founding class at Altschool, a private so-called micro school, which had just opened up in Palo Alto.

Yinuo Li:

The first year he was in Altschool, I was just very curious, my husband as well, of course, because he also has a tech background. And then we were just very open-minded. I was like, “I will just try it out for a year.” And I think that one year experience actually gave me quite some inspiration. Of course later on, there are many stories that happened, but still I was quite thankful. The biggest sort of aha for me was like, okay, the school can be so different from the ones I have experienced.

Alec Patton:

When Yinuo says that there are many stories that happened. What she’s talking about is that Altschool, the company, a startup backed by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel closed the Palo Alto school two years later, then gave up on the rest of its schools the year after that. Anyway, Yinuo’s son had moved from a progressive preschool in Beijing to a radically personalized kindergarten in California. But with the family moving back to Beijing, there wasn’t anywhere comparable where he’d go to first grade.

Yinuo Li:

Frankly, if there is a good public school, a reasonable public school for my kids to go to, I would have been fine. But I realized that’s not the case, because public school is becoming so stressful and anxiety driven. And then there is this quote unquote area of private schools. But this private school has this big sense of, okay, we’re educating for the elite. And then kids wear this fancy uniforms. And there’s a very different value, I think, compared to what I was looking for. I feel like, okay, there’s either you go to this private school system that’s trying to make your kids into those social elites or you go to public school where this is so anxiety and stress driven.

Alec Patton:

So you were concerned about the public school system. And then you said about the private school really that it felt like it was educating for the elite.

Yinuo Li:

Yeah.

Alec Patton:

You were the elite. So why was that an issue for you?

Yinuo Li:

That’s right. Now that, it was a good question. I actually also trying to kind to make peace with myself. Like why am I so opposed to it? I think I was sort of a probably elite in the intellectual sense, right? I was from a very common family. They were working class and they were good. I mean, my parents were both college grads, which is rare in their age, but it’s not because they have family privilege. It was just they were either working hard or there was opportunities around that time. But I wasn’t a sort of a social elite or economic or financial elite by any chance. I think value wise, I was very much a sort of a common person, so I think that is very strong in me.

Alec Patton:

Okay. I need to check definitions on financial elite. Because you said you weren’t a part of the financial elite doing this. In my kind of definition, a McKinsey partner who gets flown up to meet Bill Gates is within the financial elite.

Yinuo Li:

Yeah. I guess it is, you’re right. I mean, from that point of view, yes, of course. If you look at income, when I was a McKinsey partner, I definitely has … I belong to, I don’t know what percentage, but definitely on a high end, in terms of how much money I was making. But I guess I don’t think that should be a reason that you should have entered this sort of country club life, as I put it that way.

Alec Patton:

So Yinuo decided to start a school. Well, not right away, but that’s where she was headed. She’d already seen the Altschool, now she met one of the other superstars of 2010s education innovation.

Yinuo Li:

The other experience I had was a visit I paid to Salman Khan, on Khan Academy, because they started this Khan Lab school. That’s when we started kind of having this idea, I was like, “Okay, maybe we could do something like this in Beijing as well, since we know we are moving.” And the first person I talked to was actually Wang Gan, the one that runs the Little Oak preschool, because she’s been thinking about this area for way longer than I did, so she’s really paying attention to all these things.

Yinuo Li:

I was really checking with her first, is this a crazy idea, if I want to do something like Altschool or Khan Lab school, basically meaning a small school, is it possible? And second, if it is possible, do you have somebody you recommend who can run the school? Because I can’t run it. I need some sort or the headmaster or somebody who has real teaching experience. She was a big help. She basically said, “Yeah, why not?” She was encouraging me and saying it’s fine, if you figure out some place, you can establish something like this. And she connected us with Zhiwei. Zhiwei, still today she’s our headmaster. And we chatted on the phone I remember. And somehow we had this confidence, yeah, we can do this.

Alec Patton:

So you’re very early on in your new job at the Gates Foundation. And you’re talking about founding a school.

Yinuo Li:

Right.

Alec Patton:

Were you going to do that in your spare time? What was the-

Yinuo Li:

It might be naive now, but we felt it’s easy. Because I look at what Altschool is, what Khan Lab school was, it’s pretty simple to me, at least around that time, which is really naive. I was like, “Okay, three rooms, right? Five teachers. That’s not bad.” That was really the sense of naivety. And of course my husband can do this full time. It’s not like I’m going to do it, but I was sort of the person thinking and waiting to write about it. Earlier we did the interview, people were asking us, if you knew what it is, would you have started? I was like, “No.” I probably wouldn’t have the courage knowing what it really takes. But around that time, I think this whole kind of micro school concept was deceptively simple.

Alec Patton:

Well, and in COVID terms you were basically thinking about starting a learning pod.

Yinuo Li:

Yeah, you can think of it that way. Yes.

Alec Patton:

That actually weirdly makes more sense.

Yinuo Li:

It’s true. Because around that time, I think the inspiration was, okay, I think it was really a big shock to me seeing how our school and Khan Lab school was starting. And around that time they got a lot of the press, you probably know that. There are interviews everywhere for them and then they are simple. And if you look at the setup, both physically and I think physically, both in terms of hardware or real estate, it doesn’t seem that difficult.

Yinuo Li:

And I had this sense of naivety, I was like, “Okay, it’s not hard for me to find three rooms in Beijing, in such a big city.” Of course later on it turned out it’s really hard. But then I was simplifying the problem. I was like, “Okay, that’s not bad.” I’ll take the first step and see where it goes from there. That’s kind of how we started.

Alec Patton:

How much of this was just inspired by your own anxiety about not being able to find a good school for your kid in Beijing?

Yinuo Li:

Oh yeah, a large part of it.

Alec Patton:

There’s one other thing I haven’t mentioned about Yinuo. She was kind of internet famous, specifically WeChat famous. If you don’t know WeChat, it’s a Chinese messaging app that does basically everything. You can write posts, post pictures, text your friends, but you can also pay your bills, buy subway tickets, book doctor’s appointments, and do your banking. And in 2014, while she was on maternity leave for her third child, Yinuo started a WeChat blog. This didn’t come out of nowhere. She’d been getting requests for career advice for years, mostly from women. Then she got a phone call from a family friend who had a job interview coming up.

Yinuo Li:

She was paying some, I think a consultancy for her job interview. And then they were giving her all this in my mind, wrong advices on what kind of makeup you should be wearing, what kind of handbag you should be holding and all that, so she was very confused. And then she was like, okay, through sort of a little family connection found me saying like, “I’m interviewing for this job, is this how I should think about preparing for it?” I think she’s based in New York or something like that. I was like, “No, that’s not true.”

Yinuo Li:

And I realized because I have been interviewing and recruiting for McKinsey since 2002. I realized, okay, actually I have a lot of experience in this area and I’ve seen a lot of candidates out of school looking for a job and how they think about presenting themselves. I started writing this sort of series, I think about five to six articles around how you should prepare for a job interview. That’s really how it started. That’s the trigger. But then it turned out, it became much more massive because it kind of triggered a lot of McKinsey colleagues to start sharing their experience, kind of misadvices they’ve received during their career and became an interesting collection of things. But that series of interview articles was the starting point actually.

Alec Patton:

You’re going to notice that the next part of the interview has a musical accompaniment. That’s one of Yinuo’s kids practicing piano. Now back to the interview. You start out with this series about interview advice.

Yinuo Li:

Yeah.

Alec Patton:

I mean, the numbers that you were getting are pretty wild to me as readership.

Yinuo Li:

That’s right.

Alec Patton:

Were you expecting that? How did that happen?

Yinuo Li:

I mean, we have never sort of managed as a business or commercially, but now we have I think about 1.2 million subscribers. So that was interesting. When we started, because that’s when we came back to the states, I was on my maternity leave. It was an interesting time, that’s when Huajong came back. Of course we have young kids, he kind of basically stopped what he’s doing in Beijing then. And he started doing this full time. Full time, I mean that’s when he basically stopped working.

Yinuo Li:

I think he was the chief technology officer of one of the tech companies for a startup car service company. Because he was taking this leave, we were moving back to the states. He also has time. He really was the one that played quite a crucial role in setting that up. He would be the editor of receiving all these submissions and select the right articles and talk to the author and edit and put it out. It’s like a daily sort of magazine, probably like what you’re doing now. But that was the 2014 starting period, which is quite a … even now I think about it’s quite crazy.

Alec Patton:

When Yinuo and Wang Gan started thinking about founding a school, Yinuo wrote about it.

Yinuo Li:

I wrote an article saying that, are you also stressed about education for your children? And then I kind of shared my observations of the education availability in China and how I thought there were issues and also a bit of a vision of what do I think a school should be. There was a few sort of levels, right? Why is I think on the personal level and on the individual child level, I think the right education should be one that respect their intrinsic motives, right? So it’d be really children centered, so that’s at one level.

Yinuo Li:

And second vision we had is at a school level, so I think of the school, I did not like the fact that school was being advertised as almost a very narrow path. If you want to go to some of the elite schools in China, this is the decision you have to make by the time your child is age three. Because if you miss that stage, then you’re going to misstep, you’re going to not make to the right primary school, not the right middle school, not right high school and therefore you’re doomed.

Yinuo Li:

Education is really marketed as a track rather than as a experience. I was like, I think that was wrong. So by if there has to be a track, then can we have a different track? Can we have a track that kind of both taking what they can learn academically, but also respect them as individual, right? Respect whatever the essence of education is, and thinking, can we have a different track? Basically that’s kind of what I’m asking.

Yinuo Li:

And then the third one I was saying, what I felt was missing in education in China is that it is being used as almost this exclusive tool. But rather education again is a life experience, right? So not only for your children, but also for the parents. And eventually every education is local, you need to have a community. But in the way that the mainstream education, the way it’s being done, almost like the schools are sort of a consumer product, right? So your parents come here and pay the money or pick a public school. And you buy the service and then the service promise certain future for your children. That’s wrong.

Yinuo Li:

Education is something that actually should be quite inclusive and open. It should be a sense of community in there. And how do you then support adults in that system? How do you support teachers? Because it was interesting, that’s around the time when I see the survey basically serving teachers in China. Was a very interesting question. They were asking how likely you are going to have your children be a teacher again. And then the answer is 90% of them said, no, they don’t like what they’re doing and then they want their children to do something else.

Yinuo Li:

I think it’s only like single digit saying yes, which is very concerning. I said, “If you don’t have happy teachers, how can you have good education?” This is just a lot of fantasy. And thinking that you have somebody who have a big degree in front of your child and your child can be good. They have to be fulfilled individuals and professionals. And how do you support that? And how do you kind of include parents as part of the community as well. And parents need to be lifelong learners themselves to be best support of their children, so that’s the third level. Kind of outlined a little bit of our thinking what a school ought to be. That kind of thing in essence is a bit of a vision of what that is. And that was the article that got put out.

Alec Patton:

When you wrote that, what kind of response were you anticipating?

Yinuo Li:

Frankly, I was very nervous, I didn’t know. I was a nobody in education. So yes, I do have followership on my account, but I have zero credibility in education. The first title that I put on the article is that, I want to do an experiment. I was saying, I don’t really know, but this is what I thought. And then around the time, the reason we put it out was because in order to do it, we need to figure out a starting point.

Yinuo Li:

I think that was probably in February or something. When I flew back to China, again, because I took this job in summer of 2015, so I flew back for the job. And then one of the trips, it was interesting. I had this thought for a while. And then one of the person I know was introducing me to this public school and this public school was basically the only … they were freshly kind of taking up a campus, which wasn’t their campus, but they were taking up. And the campus wasn’t doing very well. There’s not a lot of students, is a kind of poorly performing public school.

Yinuo Li:

And then the principal was pretty progressive. So somebody talked about this idea and she’s open to it. And she said she’s waiting to give three classrooms of her newly adopted public school. Now I look back, everything seems a bit of miraculous because that public school also has a license for a private school. We had that ready, so that was also a trigger for me to put this article out and say, “Not only this is a thought, but we actually have a location. We actually have a proper license to start admitting.”

Alec Patton:

Why would they just have a private school license?

Yinuo Li:

The reason is that some of the public school budget is tightly managed as you can imagine. Because it’s public money and everything. But those thoughtful educators wanted to have budget to do other things. And what is the way to get the financials work is usually for them to do some business. And business can be many things, it can be many forms. They could do training and they’re not really trying to make rich themselves. But usually the money from those businesses can come in and support some of the extra things the public school want to do.

Yinuo Li:

There was a period where public schools can have license for private arms. You could have an arm for private school that’s kind of managed by you. But because it’s a private school, you could charge a tuition, you could have all kind of different financials and that financial can give you a bit of a leeway.

Alec Patton:

This kind of falls in your lap of like, oh, there’s this school, not only do they have three rooms you can use. But they already have the private school license.

Yinuo Li:

It was kind of magical, indeed, it just happened. Okay. That was the school who want to do something and have a license, so he was kind of God sent. Around the time I was like, “Okay, wonderful.” I’m still very grateful, if that didn’t exist, I would have never started. They just happened to be there around that time, only for a year. And later on, they kicked us out, but still we started.

Alec Patton:

Where was the money coming from for you?

Yinuo Li:

Because although I was at McKinsey and everything. But basically because I wasn’t doing investment or big equity, so it was really just our savings and it’s not enough to get started. So [inaudible 00:24:39] and I, we had … maybe I think that’s when our account was 300,000 followers or whatever, so there are people there. And we had this idea, we said, “We’re going to start this online learning community, okay.” And this community, frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to teach you.” But because there are people who are following my writing, as this community, we’re going to be … we call it lifelong learning community. Okay. I’m going to come up with something.

Yinuo Li:

And the community has a membership fee. And the membership fee is 2000 RMB per person, which is $300 for a year, okay. And that’s when, just so you have the context, when this kind of concept is becoming very hot. People were saying, okay, they’re learning stuff, apps, they’re getting … so their companies start doing these things in China. And we just have this followership, which we have never sort of commercialized. So we said, “We’re going to do that.” And I was pretty straightforward. I said, “We’re doing the school, and then the money is going to get us started for the school.” And again, we had no idea how successful it would be. We said, “We’re going to open it for a thousand members.” And to our surprise, it got filled, the first thousand went out in 24 hours, so basically I was sold.

Alec Patton:

Why do you think people paid for it?

Yinuo Li:

Well, people like me. It was interesting. I think two reasons. One is, yes I do, around that time, we have a followership for close to two years. There are people who really follow us and then like what I put out. 70% of my followers are women. Those are career women who just find sort of resonance in what I write. And of course I also talked about this money is going to help us start a school. I think there are also people who are like, okay, I want to be inspired by the education concept and idea, wanted just to be part of it. And then you’ll basically give them a reason to give you some money. And as I was saying, we’re not raising the money, but we’re just selling this product.

Alec Patton:

That online community now has about 16,000 members who were chatting, taking part in forums and attending online classes. But let’s get back to that article Yinuo wrote about starting a school.

Yinuo Li:

Once my article came out, of course it went viral. So like in one day we have 200,000 reads. People were all talking about it. Everybody reached out. Towards the end of the article, we only left email address. I said, “We’re going to start. So if you are interested in getting your kids into our school, this is how you apply. If you’re interested becoming a teacher, this is the email.” And in two days we got 800 emails. I still can’t believe it. I got 800 emails. We get hundreds of teachers applying to come here and then hundreds of families wanted to go, so that’s how we got started.

Alec Patton:

Well, they all hated their jobs.

Yinuo Li:

Exactly. So that’s why when I say this is something we want to put teachers. And I still think it was pretty visionary, even looking back now. I said, “I want sort of a three concentric circle.” I said, “I thought that’s what a good school should be.” I said, “The child is at the center of the classroom. And second is I think teachers should be at the center of a school.” Because if you don’t have happy teachers, you don’t have anything. And third, the school should be at the center of a community.

Yinuo Li:

I said, “Only when you have this three center aligned, it’s a good little ecosystem that can function.” I think that’s very inspiring to many teachers, so we got way more. To be frank parents are more anxious because someone said, “Oh, is this reliable?” Because everybody’s being brainwashed on this track concept of education. What track is this? Parents are skeptical, but teachers, oh my God, there’s so many teachers writing emails to us and with CVS and everything.

Yinuo Li:

And then Zhiwei our head of school was really put to be in charge of loss of operations. I continue writing, because of my first article, I became somebody known in education space from somebody who’s a completely outsider. But then I was invited to give speeches in different education conferences and all that. So that’s still part of my role, so I talk about it, I write. But kind of hands on, I don’t engage in hiring and all that. But my husband is full-time, so my husband is the CEO now, and then he’s been CEO from the beginning and also our head of school. So that has been the kind of a full-time team.

Alec Patton:

But he also doesn’t have any education experience.

Yinuo Li:

He doesn’t. Exactly. So that’s why originally he started with most of the IT side.

Alec Patton:

So you had this personal investment that your kid was going.

Yinuo Li:

Yeah.

Alec Patton:

What were you thinking when you sent your kid in for that first day of school?

Yinuo Li:

Oh, I was so excited. I was very excited. I think it was sort of a dream come true type of thing. Because when we had this article was in March and school opening September, so it was like 170 days, we counted. It’s 170 days from the day we decided to do it until the school was opening. I was like, “Wow.” Although you know you’re doing it, you still don’t believe it’s coming true.

Alec Patton:

Do you remember what that first day was like?

Yinuo Li:

Oh yeah, of course. So usually in China the first day of school is September 1st. And we didn’t really have the permission to have any ceremony in the public school ground. So we were trying to be creative, so we actually went to the Forbidden City, which is The Palace Museum. And we just bought tickets, so we basically had the first sort of opening day ceremony there. Forbidden City was basically the palace complex of the old emperors. It’s now a touristy thing.

Yinuo Li:

But there was this building, which used to be the library for the palace. We basically designed a route for different teams to go around the palace and then landed in the courtyard in front of the library. And then that’s where we had a few sort of speech and then have a few interactions and pretty short, because again, at the end of day, this is a public space. We can’t carve out any privacy for a private event. But nevertheless, that’s kind of the point of it, is like, how do you appreciate part of your surroundings and getting your experience as part of that context.

Alec Patton:

So it was like a scavenger hunt that kids were doing. What were they doing? Taking them around.

Yinuo Li:

It’s the equivalent of that, right, yeah. We had the little booklet that the teachers designed for the kids. Everybody has a little thing, they go check different places. And then that actually has stayed on as a tradition, so even this year. Basically every year we do that. Of course now we have a lot more students with parents becoming quite a interesting day. Because if we have, let’s say 400 students with their parents, and we’re talking about 1200 people. And then we ended up designing different routes and split in two different days. But that has been what we hold as a tradition for the first day of school, already because of the constraint of the venue that starts in the first year.

Alec Patton:

So every year you start in the Forbidden City?

Yinuo Li:

Yeah. Now we do this every year. Because it’s so big, this is sort of the biggest palace complex, so there’s no way you can do the whole thing. Now it’s like a half day event and usually the teachers would go couple times before just to map out what route we’re going to take. And different grades then have different themes. For example, for higher grade, they can understand more and then their topic can be, what is the water system like in the palace? Because usually those are things you don’t pay attention to when you just go there to visit and take pictures, so things like that.

Yinuo Li:

And also what are some of the doors, there will be theme around doors, different type of doors and gates and why is it designed so? And also there are all kind of different things related to their life. Because that was built, I think last year was 600 years of anniversary, so that was, how do they do heating during winter? Because it’s super cool in Beijing.

Alec Patton:

So you present each grade with a mystery to solve?

Yinuo Li:

Indeed, yeah, that’s a good way to say. Exactly. And this year was even more fun. We have parents kind of playing. They dress up as people from that time and that would be a little quiz they would give to the students. And the students would actually have a presentation sort of in front of them. And after they’re back, it was integrated into our math class and Chinese class or language class as well and saying, “They’re going to make a small presentation of what happened. What did they see and why is that?”

Alec Patton:

What was the significance of choosing the Forbidden City? Why did you want that to be your launch?

Yinuo Li:

It was interesting because it was in Beijing, right. And then if you ask, what is the most famous landmark? Would be the Forbidden City. But how much do you really know about it? I certainly didn’t know much. I think that was part of the inspiration, can we choose something that’s in the city? And you think you know, but you really don’t know, and use that as well. I think that’s one aspect of it.

Yinuo Li:

The other aspect of it is really picking somewhere public. And part of it is kind of breaking down the school walls, right. Is to have real life experience. We wanted to do something that’s outside of the school. And you can do something that’s kind of connected to a meaningful, a significant sort of landmark of the city.

Yinuo Li:

It was interesting in my sort of corporate life, when I was at McKinsey and all that. And I know there will be companies and corporates that rent spaces in Forbidden City for private events. And from my other side of my life, I know that’s true. But you have to be able to pay. But then we were like, we don’t for the school, but we can buy tickets. Tickets is pretty affordable. That kind of part excites us because usually people think about, you have an event in the Forbidden City, that means you somehow is financially well equipped.

Yinuo Li:

People think that’s kind of fancy, that’s type of event. But that was this contrast we have, I was like, “We’ll just buy tickets. We’ll just go.” Anyway, so that was part of the … I guess that’s the main intention to make it familiar, but actually foreign environment and make it a public sort of space and take place in a public space and kind of marry that with what we want to do in education.

Alec Patton:

That’s so cool. You have this really fun launch. You’ve got this powerful metaphor of taking something familiar and looking more deeply at it as … that’s a pretty potent metaphor for education generally. And then you’re rolling, you have, did you say 31 students first year?

Yinuo Li:

Yeah.

Alec Patton:

You have 31 students. You have these three classrooms. Everything’s great. When did you find out you had to move?

Yinuo Li:

Yeah. I think we found out basically towards the end of the first year. And after it was pretty abrupt because saying that during the summer you have to move out.

Alec Patton:

Why was that? Why did you have to move?

Yinuo Li:

I mean the official reason is that this is a public school ground. Although we pay rent, there’s a contract. But it is basically deemed not okay. And then this is a very gray area. When they decide it’s okay, it’s okay. When they decide it’s not okay, it’s not okay.

Alec Patton:

Because I remember you telling me that it was not that uncommon a thing for a public school to have a private school license, because then they could use the tuition to get other supplies.

Yinuo Li:

Basically in this particular case, they used to have two license, they still have. But then when they got the license it was okay, I don’t know what happened around that time. That was a policy window, it was okay. And then they were looking at it because there are so many public schools were making so much money from this and then basically stashed away in their own bank account. They called it the little gold mine or whatever. There was even a name for it.

Yinuo Li:

And then of course there is this discipline or whatever came down and saying that’s not okay anymore. Basically we were able to write that gap when they had that license, they can use it, but then turned out that became not okay, so we have to move. I remember they told us probably in spring. And I remember we were basically frantically looking for alternatives for the next year.

Alec Patton:

What did you do?

Yinuo Li:

Well, there are two things we do. First of all, we continue to negotiate. We actually did agree for a longer time, can we at least keep part of the classroom? Because originally the plan was to … the second year we have more students, right?

Alec Patton:

Sure.

Yinuo Li:

Basically they were able to, I think keep the three classrooms for us for one more year. But then whoever the new recruits we have, we have no more space for it. The school is close to this park called [inaudible 00:37:22] park. And then the park has a sort of a children’s activity center. And one of the center is a Lego store rented at center. They have Lego classes and then they have a few classrooms upstairs and was not widely used.

Yinuo Li:

We were just being creative. We negotiate with that Lego store and saying, “Can we use the rooms upstairs?” And that was our first move. Basically the younger kids who were recruited ended up being in that park. And then in parallel, we of course continue looking for places where we can move everybody, because that’s not ideal solution.

Yinuo Li:

I think we ended up renting a building which I don’t even know how to translate it, used to be a boiler room. Beijing in winter, it was heated by, they call it kind of central heating. Basically the city, each area has this big boiler. And then the boiler get into … every household was connected with this heating device, which is basically by steam. And then so the boiler was burning coal and heat up water and getting to the central pipes and going to the city.

Yinuo Li:

That was a deserted, used to be a state owned factory. The factory had this kind of boiler building, because it’s a building they converted into a three story building because the boiler used to be super big. We calculated can probably host a hundred students or 150 if we kind of do the design. We rented it, basically that was a pretty bare building with a yard. And then we ended up hiring designers and really looked at how do we convert that into a mini school building.

Yinuo Li:

It become a very creative project. It’s very nice. I’ll show you pictures when I see, it’s very children friendly, we design all those little features with the slide inside, with little holes where only children can go to, where that become a little kind of a book nuke for reading corners.

Yinuo Li:

Anyway, so it was really good. And we were there for I think probably a year and a half, maybe towards the end of 2019 I think. And then it was interesting because we were getting attention. Because I write and people know we’re doing this. The Beijing sort of education authority came to check us out. And then of course on the education side and on the design, they were quite complimentary saying, “Okay, this is great.” We were very proud. It was good times.

Yinuo Li:

But then because education authority came, according to the whatever school building standards, this doesn’t comply. And then it’s not because we are sort of breaking the law because it’s almost impossible to comply with the standard. The standard was made in such an impractical way. Everybody was trying to get around. But because they came, so they have to say, we came and we checked on your facility, you don’t comply. And then they gave us a notice and saying, “You have to move.” And that was it.

Yinuo Li:

I was like, “Wow.” And then of course they were kind of trying to be helpful as well. There was this school who they’re basically not running well, they’re losing students, but they have a facility, so they have the right license. But that license was 10, 30 years ago. Their building is pretty rundown. It’s much worse than what we have. But ironically that’s okay because back then they have checked the boxes and nobody bothered to check them again. There are many kind of laughable things like this. I was like, “Wow. Because so this is fine, and ours isn’t.”

Yinuo Li:

But anyway, it was fine. They were saying, “Okay, maybe that’s one way for you guys to work this out.” I think at the beginning of 2019, we moved to that school. So we had signed a contract with them, sort of renting their space because they have plenty of space that they’re losing students. And then after that, because then they had so much debt, which we didn’t know, because the school has been losing money for a long time. And one of the condition is for us to help sustain their cost as well. Meaning they have students, they have teachers, so continue doing that, but ended up, because there are so much unrevealed that debt when they signed this with us, we just realized there was a big scam.

Yinuo Li:

I think in beginning of 2020, yeah, last year, we started looking for another place and then there was another school they have moved and then they have a space. So this is where ETU now. And then we ended up kind of taking up the lease until this almost all over again, kind of renovating the school. Of course we kind of make it as you’re doing education, we make every move a education opportunity.

Yinuo Li:

I remember every time we move to a new place, we’ll have a project for two weeks for the kids to learn about the new place, to draw a map of where this is, what’s inside the campus, what’s around us. And then because we have to have school buses because there are kids coming from different places to our school. And then I think one of the projects for middle schoolers this year, starting last year is how do you design a bus route? That’s actually a pretty complex math problem. And how do you sort of make that, knowing where the school is, where different people live and how do you map out a route? We’re trying to do as much as we can kind of turning everything into a educational opportunity.

Alec Patton:

I want to end with something Yinuo said to me about what’s kept the school and kept her going despite all these setbacks.

Yinuo Li:

People see the infrastructure, see the whatever curriculum, but that’s not what make good education happen. What make education happen is a group of adult that kind of oxalate on the same frequency. And that’s how we survive all these moves, we could have easily died. It’s costly. We were still not making money now. It’s not like we’re making money. Every time we ended up, there are different things that happened. But you kind of keep going, so I guess the deep down is how do you kind of continue to build this community, this virtual community almost of people who think and believe the same. And I think that’s the ultimate goal. I think the visible part is only just like the tip of the iceberg, it’s really all below. That’s why I think High Tech High was doing, I can totally appreciate and understand what you are doing, because that’s exactly what kind of keeps the visible part going is the invisible part.

Alec Patton:

High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. You can find photos from ETU school in the show notes. And let me tell you, there is a lot more to discuss about ETU. I haven’t talked about the campus they opened in Guangzhou, a city in China that according to Google Maps, it’s a 21 hour drive from Beijing and it’s still growing strong. I also didn’t even mention the app they designed for the school, which teachers use to both design projects and write reflections every week. The school took some of the stories collected in that app and published a book. It won a national award. I mean, of course it did. Nothing about this story surprises me anymore. Huge thanks to Yinuo Li for telling me about it, and thanks to you for listening.