At 11 noon on July 5, it was extremely hot and humid in an underground garage in a community in the south of Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province. The 18-year-old Fang Zhengtian was waving his drumsticks with concentration, beating out rhythmic drumbeats sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly.
He has been admitted to the McNally Smith Conservatory of Music in the United States and will go to the United States to study in the middle of next month. As a partial-major student who had failed the mathematics exam for a long time, Fang Zhengtian gave up the college entrance examination but achieved another kind of success in life.
The 18-year-old Fang Zhengtian has neat short hair and glasses, looking youthful and dynamic. His father, Fang Guangming, is in business, and his mother, Wang Jiping, is a community cadre. In Fang Guangming's opinion, his son Fang Zhengtian's sense of musical rhythm is a family inheritance. When Fang Zhengtian was 5 years old, his father Fang Guangming sent him to the best jazz drum training class in Quzhou City. Fang Zhengtian's jazz drum talent quickly emerged. Compared with his peers, his jazz drum scores always ranked first. At the age of 15, when he was in the second grade of junior high school, he took the Zhejiang Provincial A-level Music Specialty Student Examination and passed with high scores.
Compared with jazz drumming, Fang Zhengtian’s cultural achievements are relatively inferior. In elementary school, Fang Zhengtian's grades were still in the middle of the class. In junior high school, his grades were barely average. In the third grade of junior high school, Fang Guangming and his wife decided to let Fang Zhengtian stop drum training and sprint for the high school entrance examination. Fang Zhengtian attended the music class of Quzhou Senior High School. At the same time, I work harder to practice jazz drums and insist on training for at least 4 hours every day. And his math scores are getting worse. "I'm very poor in mathematics." Fang Zhengtian said. For a 150-point test paper, the score is estimated to be only more than 20 points, probably only a few points. But Fang Zhengtian's father said that Fang Zhengtian passed all his academic examinations and was grade B in many subjects. Although he was a little weak in mathematics, he was also grade C.
The noise caused by his son's drumming at home caused complaints from neighbors, and Fang Guangming went door-to-door to apologize. In order to let his son practice drums better, Fang Guangming bought an underground garage in a neighboring community. The underground garage has good sound insulation and the sound of drums will basically not disturb the residents...
Fang Zhengtian started practicing eagerly: Drumsticks One drum is worn out after another, and several drum heads are broken every year... The cost of repairing jazz drums alone costs tens of thousands of yuan every year. At the same time, he began to participate in various competitions, and hard work always paid off: Gradually, Fang Zhengtian's jazz drum skills got better and better, and he won trophies in various competitions. When jazz drum masters perform in East China, they will invite Fang Zhengtian to participate... Jazz drumming originated in Europe and the United States, and Fang Zhengtian wants to study abroad. "My dad said that as long as I work hard enough, I can pass the TOEFL exam and the European and American music conservatory exams, and I will be able to study abroad if I try hard enough."
Conservatory of Music, MI Conservatory of Music, McNally Smith The Conservatory of Music and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music opened their doors to Fang Zhengtian at the same time. Fang Zhengtian chose McNally Smith Conservatory of Music. For this young man, this is a natural choice: "My cultural achievements are not good, but I like jazz drums. I want to become a creative drummer who can influence others, and I will work hard in this direction."
Learning is not easy. Every child has his own advantages that are different from others. Respecting children's differences and finding out the personality and advantages of each child is the essence of education. "Every child is a seed. Whether it is a school or a parent, all they can do is help the child find the soil suitable for it to grow and germinate."