“Why is that boy asking so many weird questions during class? Is he crazy?” “Why is he doing those questions that the teacher never mentioned? It is not going to be on the exam, right?”
“Why is he doing math!!!”

Yes, that boy doing math, is me, who has been called “math freak”’ since primary school.

Everything changed rapidly for me when I was nine, my family and I moved from Taiwan to Chengdu because of my father’s job. I was isolated when I first came to Chengdu. When I first started my new primary school here, I faced a huge challenge in adjusting to the surrounding environment. I was a total outsider with no friends and no shared culture.

There was one thing that I did share with other people though.

The thing was mathematics. Math became the tool for me to become a member of this unknown society. I will never forget the first moment I was first applauded by the teacher for answering a math problem that no one else knew. My classmates stared at me in a shock, with an air of surprised appreciation. When my classmates started to ask me for help to solve math problems, I felt that I finally became a person that could help out others. The day one of my classmate told me I was the best person in math in our class, I eventually began to be confident about myself. Starting from that time, school became a place where I was excited and happy.

However, my love of math became obscured in secondary school. The study was too busy and I had no time to develop my own interests.