Room 5023
Fudan University, Shanghai, 2008 to 2012
Back in college, the four of us in Room 5023 turned our dorm into a workshop. We built our own gadgets, filmed videos that taught other students electronics, and answered letters from students all over China. National television came to film the dorm, and Chinese media called it the real-life Big Bang Theory. It made us some of China's first generation of online influencers.
The workshop
The room was full of things we made ourselves, from the LED sign to a programmable router and timer relay that cut the internet and the power at midnight, so that we would actually go to sleep. I wrote 单词随意背 (Word at Will), a small vocabulary app for GRE and TOEFL that spread among Fudan students.
5023大讲堂
In 2009 we started a video series, 5023大讲堂 (Lecture Room 5023), in which we explained electronics and computing by building and testing things on camera: a first microcontroller, analog circuits, MATLAB in ten minutes, everyday computer skills. A second season followed in 2010. The series passed a million views, and students across China wrote in with questions and asked for advice.
The award
Fudan named 5023 its top dormitory in May 2010. The room then won the Shanghai College Students of the Year and, in May 2011, was named one of the ten National College Students of the Year for 2010. The award belonged to the four of us. As head of the dorm, I went on stage to accept it.
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