Running Her Own Race: From Shanghai to London

INCHWISE EDUCATION

Music education is never merely the accumulation of technical skill. It is also about how a young person, through training, choice and expression, gradually comes to understand herself: how she hears her own voice, responds to a work, and finds a place of her own between inherited tradition and personal experience.

Teresa’s story unfolds at precisely such a point of transition. What moved us was that, throughout the process, she never stopped asking questions of herself. She hesitated, felt uncertain and was unsettled by a new environment. She repeatedly adjusted the balance between her parents’ expectations, her teachers’ advice and her own.

The move from Shanghai to Britain changed more than her school and curriculum. She had to adapt to a different form of training and reconsider her relationship with music.

This is the quality we value in Teresa. When a young person begins to understand herself, organise her own life and accept responsibility for her choices, that deserves more serious attention than any letter of admission.

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Written by Zhou Zhou and Li Ya

Edited by Chen Hang

“HERE, I FEEL AS THOUGH I HAVE COME BACK TO LIFE.”

There was light in Teresa’s eyes as she spoke.

Not long ago, she gave a violin recital in a century-old London church. Members of the audience quietly wiped away tears. One woman she had never met hurried forward afterwards and embraced her. On stage, Teresa looked like a professional violinist.

It was difficult to imagine that, only six months earlier, she had been a pupil at one of Shanghai’s highly regarded municipal key high schools. She had fought her way through the fiercely competitive senior-high entrance examination, only to find herself overwhelmed by the science curriculum. Some evenings, a mathematics problem she could not understand would leave her in tears three times. The light in her eyes was fading by the day.

She then made what many Chinese parents would regard as an exceptionally risky decision: she took leave from school, gave up the prized place she had worked so hard to secure, and flew to Britain on her own to prepare for specialist music-school auditions.

She had studied music since childhood, but, like many young instrumentalists, had tried to keep two paths open: academic study and the hope of entering a conservatoire through the national university entrance examination. Now, forced to choose between grinding away at academic subjects that gave her no sense of achievement and pursuing the music she genuinely loved, she decided not to wait.

From landing in London to receiving an offer from the music school she most wanted took only 57 days. It was an impressive act of self-rescue.

How did a secondary-school student move, in barely six months, from near suffocation on China’s examination track to confidence on a stage abroad? Teresa’s story suggests that growth need not always follow a prescribed route. Sometimes the way forward lies beyond it.

Within China’s culture of intensive, parent-driven education, Teresa’s upbringing was unusual. Her mother took an exceptionally relaxed view: protect the child’s interests and enrol her in almost no academic tutoring.

While other children raced ahead through extra classes and endless exercises, Teresa played the violin, read and allowed herself time to think. That open space gave her a rich inner life. It also left her without the usual defences when she moved through the entrance-examination divide and into a key high school. The shock was severe.

“Listening to the teachers was honestly like listening to a language I did not understand.”

Because she had not studied the material in advance during the summer or attended accelerated classes, Teresa began the new term already far behind the main group. The pressure of the academic curriculum descended at once, particularly in mathematics.

Her mother remembers Teresa scanning a problem with a homework-help app and still being unable to understand the answer on the screen. Faced with a desk covered in mathematics work, she could cry three times in a single evening.

During the years of pandemic-era online lessons and intense pressure over progression, the previously cheerful Teresa became dejected, self-conscious and despondent. Apart from completing exercises, she escaped into her phone for brief moments of relief.

Her mother found it painful to watch. “After practising for more than an hour every day, she still had tutoring and homework. It was torture for a child. If she wanted to relax at the weekend, every one of her friends was in an extra class. There was no one she could even arrange to see.”

The decisive turn came in the summer after Teresa’s final year of junior secondary school. She travelled with an orchestra to perform in Vienna.

There she noticed the looks exchanged by musicians on stage and the unforced smiles on their faces. They appeared happy because they were wholly immersed in the music.

“In China, even when you study music, the environment is often another technical arms race,” Teresa says. “You follow the rules, enter competitions and take graded examinations.”

In Vienna, she became certain that she wanted more than to “play the violin correctly”. She wanted to enjoy music.

During the October holiday, she told her mother formally: “Mum, I want to study abroad.”

Her mother did hesitate. The family had invested considerable effort in securing Teresa’s place at the Shanghai high school. It represented an important achievement, reached with a great deal of maternal time and support. To hear her daughter say that this was not the secondary-school life she wanted required time to absorb.

Nor was admission to a specialist music school abroad an option that lay within easy reach or could be secured overnight.

But her mother did not dismiss Teresa’s response as an attempt to avoid difficulty. After repeated conversations, she began to see that this emotionally perceptive girl, whose attachment to music was intense, may simply have entered a rhythm that did not suit her.

Gradually, she moved to her daughter’s side.

“If you are certain, leave the rest of the conversations to me.”

She immediately began searching for help with studying abroad. In doing so, Teresa’s mother made an unconventional decision. She passed over the large, well-known education agencies and chose Inchwise, a small specialist team of independent mentors.

“My daughter is emotionally perceptive and artistic, and at the time she had suffered a real setback,” Teresa’s mother says. She believed that Teresa needed a guide who could genuinely see the child and offer psychological support, not a standardised production line.

She had known Ms Peng and Mr Yan for years, and they had recently moved to London. “I felt more secure asking teachers who already knew us and understood the child.”

They eventually settled on Britain. Teresa’s act of self-rescue—a rebellion against a conventional path—had formally begun.

What follows is Teresa’s account in her own words.

THREE BOLD WOMEN—AND A DECISION TO LEAVE EARLY

My state of mind during those months at high school in China was genuinely poor. I sat in the classroom every day unable to understand what the teacher was saying. That frustration—the complete absence of any sense of achievement—wears away a person’s confidence bit by bit.

When I decided to study music abroad, my first thought was Vienna. I had experienced the music university there and loved its orchestras. To me, Vienna was the city of music.

Later, after Mum and Ms Peng discussed it, we decided on Britain. In Germany or Austria, language would be the first difficulty. Britain is also unusually diverse and open. I could encounter more cultures and ideas, which would help me deepen my understanding of music and bring different kinds of knowledge into it.

London also makes a natural base. Travelling from London to study elsewhere in Europe is much easier than beginning in another country and repeatedly returning to London. In the end, I chose Britain.

“It really did take three bold women: one bold enough to ask, one bold enough to imagine it, and one bold enough to act. I badly needed a change of environment. Ms Peng happened to be back in Shanghai and asked whether I wanted to go to London. My mother was decisive. She supported me without hesitation.”

The pressure of moving within a few months from an amateur level to auditioning for a specialist music school was immense.

Before I came to Britain, I had gone through a period of real despondency. Preparing in China, I practised the same three pieces every day and worked repeatedly on the same techniques. Eventually, I was exhausted. I could see no substantive change in myself, and there was nothing new around me to stimulate my mind.

At the end of December, with only a few months left before the formal auditions, we made an extremely bold decision: I would take leave from school and prepare in Britain.

Looking back, it really was three bold women—one who raised the idea, one who could imagine it, and one who made it happen. I needed a new environment. Ms Peng happened to return to Shanghai and asked whether I wanted to come to London. My mother did not hesitate.

We booked the flights and left.

It felt as though, at the end of 2025, I had given myself a great gift. The reasoning was simple: arrive earlier and become familiar with the place earlier.

Once I reached Britain, the most immediate feeling was that, even if I was not forcing myself to practise for four or five hours every day as I had in China, stepping outside and walking through London still meant that I was absorbing the culture around me. The time did not feel wasted.

The city gave my mind new forms of stimulus and restored my ability to perceive the world.

IN LONDON, I REGAINED CONTROL OF MY LIFE

Here, I feel as though I have come back to life. It is not only daily life that has revived. My understanding of music—and of myself—has been overturned.

The first source of healing is the environment. Walking through residential streets, I see countless scenes of quiet and calm. With birdsong and wide green spaces around you, it feels as though people are living within nature and drawing strength from it.

I love animals. In Shanghai, if you take a dog outside, it has to remain tightly on a lead. It can run only on the small, inadequate patch of grass inside the residential compound, and you must watch constantly in case it disturbs someone.

On the large lawns here, dogs are often allowed to run freely. The relationship between people and animals feels closer to its natural state. That simple return to nature relaxes me.

“Because I was poor at science subjects, I always thought I was stupid and fragile. Once I stepped outside that system of judgment, I discovered that I was remarkably resilient and determined. When something is what I truly love, the energy I can release surprises even me.”

In Shanghai, every day was filled with homework and examinations, and the environment was almost too familiar. In London, I encounter something different every day.

Teachers help me plan my schedule, but a large part of the decision-making remains in my own hands. I practise first thing in the morning and finish the essential work. In the afternoon, I go out, walk by the river, watch the water and the birds, and release the pressure.

My weekly timetable even includes museums and the gym—activities that appear to have nothing to do with violin practice.

This way of living sends me a powerful message: I can direct my life. I can control my own tempo.

Music education here has also been very different. Previously, my teachers concentrated on foundations. They broke everything into specific instructions: how to play this passage, which bowing to use there. The emphasis was on basic technique.

Study abroad is more exploratory. Teachers want you to create something of your own.

I remember playing Paganini’s Cantabile. I had always regarded it as a calm, gentle piece. But my teacher repeatedly stopped and asked: “Where is your love? You have to put your love into it. This is a love song.”

In an environment relentlessly focused on technique, it is difficult to find the complex feeling you want to express. All your attention goes into the technical completeness of the left and right hands. You fear a wrong note or an inaccurate rhythm.

During my time in Britain, I could hear that my music had changed. Previously, my playing resembled writing in which the words fail to convey the meaning. Now I can tell a complete story through the violin.

It no longer feels like a joyless recitation from memory. It has become something alive, something that I create.

During my audition preparation, I gave my first local solo performance in a church. To be honest, I was extremely nervous at first. I feared making a mistake or suddenly losing my place.

But once I began and entered the musical state, my mind held nothing but the movement of the music. The tension was gradually dissolved by the music itself.

Afterwards, we met a Chinese woman in the audience. She was so moved that she rushed forward and held me tightly. Other listeners told me they had cried as I played.

I suddenly understood music differently. It is not a tool for pleasing an examiner. It is alive. It is the language through which I communicate with the world.

I also came to see myself differently. In the Chinese education system, because I struggled with science subjects, I thought I was stupid and fragile. Once I left that standard of judgment behind, I found that I was resilient and determined. When I love something, the energy it releases in me can be astonishing.

Audition preparation is never smooth throughout, and I did break down at times.

At one rehearsal, it suddenly felt as though every improvement I had made had disappeared. My fingers would not obey me, and the intonation seemed pinned to the wrong place.

The despair was like spending hours cooking a dish, only to drop it all on the floor one second before serving it. Everything appeared to have been wasted.

I was consumed by anxiety for a time, but I never considered giving up.

My parents never imposed the pressure that I “had to get in”.

“We have seen every improvement you have made,” they told me. “You only need to do enough that you will not regret it. Even if you are not admitted in the end, we will still think you have done exceptionally well.”

Ms Peng also noticed the pressure and helped me build an alternative route. She explained that, even if I did not get into one of the leading specialist music schools, I could attend a broader school with a strong music programme.

She even tried to tempt me with a school that kept five dogs. Half-joking, she said: “That school would be quite good. At least you would have dogs with you every day.”

That support gave me the courage to go forward and the right to step back. I knew that, if I fell, they would catch me.

“If you believe in your decision, then make it and act. Once you have control over your own life, an immense sense of security follows.”

I have now received an offer from a specialist music school, but I did not want to return to China and do nothing until the new term in September. Mr Yan therefore arranged for me to join a London secondary school temporarily and begin A-level courses early. I wanted to prepare for the rhythm of sixth-form life.

At first, I chose history, mathematics and psychology. After several lessons, I realised that psychology was quite different from what I had imagined. It was heavily theoretical and required a great deal of memorisation of experimental modules.

I told the teacher directly that I wanted to change subjects.

Previously, I had never imagined that changing a course could be straightforward. Here, once I raised the question, the teacher quickly listed every available subject that fitted my timetable and encouraged me to speak directly to those teachers.

I changed without difficulty to art and design.

The experience transformed my understanding of the cost of trying something and changing course. Here, the cost of a mistake is much smaller than one imagines. If a subject does not suit you, or you genuinely dislike it, you can change.

The unit of time is not a year or even a month. It can be a day. You can speak to the school today, the teacher can alter the timetable tomorrow morning, and you can attend the new class tomorrow.

Why, then, did I retain mathematics—the subject that had caused me so much distress in China?

Because the logic of subject choice is entirely different here. In China, choosing subjects can feel disconnected from a future career. Many pupils take physics and chemistry simply because doing so leaves more options when they apply to university.

Here, the school provides careers education. Teachers help you examine your character and work backwards from the kind of career you may want towards the subjects you should take.

If I later decide to develop in another direction, mathematics may provide necessary support. Choosing subjects through career planning has been extremely useful. It reduces time spent on ineffective learning and allows me to concentrate on the knowledge I may actually need.

My greatest hope for the new school in September is that the food will be good. I love eating.

Even if it is not, I will manage. I have already mastered the art of cooking with a microwave, so I am not going to starve.

My mother now asks me to make many important decisions. I can increasingly feel that my life is mine to choose and organise.

The past six months have given me a new confidence: if you believe in your decision, make it and act. Once you have control over your own life, an immense sense of security follows.