Over the past eight years my husband and I lived in China for several academic terms while I taught English at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. SJTU, one of the top universities in the country, has a faculty exchange program with my college, Highline Community College in Des Moines, Washington. Every time Dick and I stay in Shanghai — in 2002, 2008, and now 2010 &mdash we're awed and mystified all over again.

Each day there I'm stuffed full as a pig with information, new flavors and smells, and fresh aspects of this realization: China is a dragon on the move. The Communist Party embraces capitalism within communism, and a culture that reveres tradition is now welcoming new wealth and progress.

Some 1.3 billion people work in this nation approximately the size of the U.S., a land with the largest hydroelectric dam project in the world, the building of which forced the relocation of millions of people. Mass relocations happen daily as projects move quickly forward — new subway lines (twelve in Shanghai now), new highways to meet the demand for more cars, and skyscrapers to accommodate more people who can afford to live in the cities. People adapt, as the Chinese always have in their personal lives, for the sake of the motherland. They are taught from childhood about the importance of loyalty to their families and to their country.

One of my Ph.D. students, who was earning his graduate degree in computer science, said, "In my childhood, I had dreamed to become a famous scientist. However, no matter whether I could become a famous scientist, it is my duty to develop the new technology." His duty is to be used as the country needs him, and the country needs more engineers, programmers, mathematicians, and physicists.

June 8, 2010: It was make-or-break time for high school seniors across China. Students hunched over the first day of their national college entrance exams in locations around the country. This, as the Shanghai Daily headlined, was “the final frontier.” Parents of the 9.57 million students who took the exams this year waited outside the testing locations for news.

Silence reigned everywhere near these testing sites, a silence especially strange in noisy cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Construction in the vicinity stopped. Drivers who honked their cars or trucks were fined. Some families had spent more than they could afford on a hotel room close to the place where their son or daughter would sit for the exam, so that traveling time wouldn't add to their child’s stress. Ambulances waited outside the testing sites in case students fainted or became ill from the strain.

Inside many locations the students were watched with surveillance cameras this year, according to the Shanghai Daily. Metal detectors installed at most sites would "prevent candidates from taking any electronic or battery-driven devices — apart from basic calculators — into classrooms ... after a cheating scandal in northeast China’s Jilin Province ignited a national outcry last year." More police were in evidence, as well as "disciplinary inspectors." The test papers were kept in a vault until exam time, and in some places, military troops ensured “security in transporting test papers.”

Students taking the exam knew: Their scores would determine the rest of their lives. Education is mandatory and paid for by the government in China only through grade nine. They were the best students, the ones who had passed the ninth grade exams, the ones whose families could afford to pay for their education from tenth to twelfth grade. Students who scored exceptionally well on the college entrance exams would go to universities such as Peking, Fudan, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, or SJTU. Those with merely high scores would go to lesser known universities. The rest would simply become shopkeepers, waiters, or taxi-drivers.

The fates at stake were not only their own. With one-child families the norm, each family’s future and income rested on its child’s performance in the exams. The best jobs used to be in the courts and in government. Now the top jobs go to people who have degrees in science and technology. No wonder some students faint during the exam, or become ill or forget all they learned.

Education has been a strong thread in China’s fabric for thousands of years, and the ability to regurgitate memorized information has long determined an individual's place in society. Not long ago students all used to sit in narrow chairs bolted to the floor, looking up and listening to their teachers dispense knowledge from behind a lectern on a raised platform. As one of my students, whose English name was Wolf, said, "We were not asked to think, just to write what we were told."

Chinese get good at memorizing. Clerks remember what you bought the last time and how much you spent. Teachers remember which student earned which grade for which assignment. Students remember poems by Li Bai (known as Li Po in the United States) and dozens of other poets they learned in grade school. They remember math equations that extend the width of a page. They give a three-minute impromptu speech after 15 minutes of preparation time. They memorize English — with a vocabulary range that outshines that of most American students.

College is a struggle, though not because the course work is rigorous. Students confided, "If you make it into a university, you will graduate." They struggle because they live in small dorm rooms with other students (usually four students per room) away from home and family. It's against the law for students to marry, so they may worry about a girlfriend or boyfriend back home, but mostly they worry about the burden their education puts on their family.

At SJTU tuition costs about 4,000 Renminbi or RMB ($600) per semester, the dorm rooms cost 1,000 RMB, and additional money is needed for food, clothing, etc. To put this in perspective, SJTU professors earn approximately 5,000 RMB a month. A sprinkling of students may work part time during the summer, but a university student’s full-time job is to be a student who builds a life around the six or so hours a day of classes and school-related activities, with three meals at one of the five main canteens.

The students’ future lives are set by the major they're in, though some students question whether they want, after all, to be an engineer or physicist. My student Alf wondered aloud, "Do I really want to major in math? My passion is psychology — understanding why people do things." But the country needs mathematicians in its great technology leap forward, and a degree in math guarantees a good job that pays well, whereas a degree in psychology might not.

Students work hard to learn English, the international language. Many take English names: Laura, Ashley, Andy, David. Others have less common names: White, Welling, Mars, Eleven. They are finding their way in two languages and an ever-widening world, to succeed not just for themselves but for their families and for their country. In a speech at Cambridge in 2009, Premier Wen Jiabao said: "Today, 300 million Chinese are learning English. . . . Had we not learned from others through exchanges and enriched ourselves by drawing on others’ experiences, we would not have enjoyed today's prosperity and progress."