When Wang Fei was admitted to university, his parents hosted the entire village at a banquet. “Not many people here went to university and in our family I’m the only one,” he says.
But two years after his graduation with a logistics degree from Ningbo university, his family and neighbours in Xiaozhai, a village in the hilly landlocked province of Guizhou, one of the poorest corners of China, are in much less of a mood to celebrate 24-year-old Mr Wang, because his career is not living up to expectations. “When they look at me, many people think university is useless,” he says.
In a country where scholarship was once seen as the path of social mobility for anyone, especially the poorest, many now view higher education with scepticism.