Graduate-turned-butcher shares experience with alma mater

Photo by Chen Tuanjie / For China Daily

Each month, he is assigned a certain amount of writing task, and he works independently.

Years of pork selling have equipped Lu with valuable experience in the industry. He has been sharing his experience as a guest teacher in a private vocational school in Guangdong province, teaching the students how to sell pork.

He met the owner of the private school - Chen Sheng, also a Peking University graduate - a few years ago.

"Chen contacted me when he was on a trip to Xi'an in 2006," Lu recalls. "He told me about his plans to start a school, but I hesitated for a very long time before I decided to join him."

Lu joined Chen as a guest teacher in 2011. Six months after he was invited to the teaching post, Lu published a book of 100,000 words on how to sell pork wisely and successfully.

"This is something that I am really good at," Lu says.

His pork business went particularly well during the SARS epidemic in 2003 when every one was extremely cautious about food sanitation, because Lu is known for his high quality pork.

Even though Lu has had a few media interviews since 2003, he admits that he does not like public speaking.

But he could not reject the invitation of Xu Zhihong, former president of Peking University, to speak at his alma mater.

Xu specially visited Lu when he was on a business trip to Xi'an earlier this year, and invited Lu back to the campus as the university was launching a series of lectures on career planning and entrepreneurship.

Xu wanted Peking University's students to understand how to face setbacks and hardships after they graduated, just like Lu.

Ten years ago when Lu's story was first highlighted by the media, Xu was often asked: "Why is a Peking University student selling pork?"

"Why shouldn't our graduates sell pork?" was Xu's first reaction. "It should not be so surprising, as I see it," he was quoted as saying.

A few days before Lu returned to the campus to present his speech, Peking University conducted a survey involving 240 students in the university to find out about their opinions about pork selling as a career.

Results show that 90 percent of students are willing to be butchers. More than 50 percent of the students surveyed consider selling pork as no different from any other careers, and may even have a promising future.

Lu was very satisfied when he learned about the survey results.

"The society is becoming more tolerant, more diverse," he says.

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