Following up on Outliers: My father's story of success

After having discussed Malcolm Gladwell's theory of success, I've begun to give more thought about my father, and how he achieved success.

My grandparents fled from China to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War in 1949. My grandfather was a foot soldier during the war; my grandmother was illiterate, like so many of the women who couldn't afford basic education back in the days. My father grew up the youngest of seven siblings, and they, along with my grandparents, lived in a one-room shack.

My father has only begun to recall tidbits of his poverty to me in the recent years – how he didn't ask for new shoes even though his were tattered and torn, with glaring holes in them. How he used to have to borrow his friend's motorcycle to pick up my mother on dates. His circumstances were terrible, even for standards at those times.

My father is inarguably an intelligent man. He graduated top of his class in middle school, and went on to study at Jianguo High School, the most prestigious boys' high school in Taiwan. He then took the college entrance exams and scored in the top percentile (where he aced the writing and English portion). He was accepted into Tsinghua University, the top engineering school in Taiwan, where he studied electrical engineering.

When I was in high school taking advanced calculus, he could still explain the concepts to me in simple and articulate ways (I, on the other hand, can't even remember what derivatives are anymore). He takes one look at the LSAT Logic Games that I've been studying for, tells me it's for dweebs, and solves it within minutes. He remembers Chinese history like it was yesterday. His hobbies include Sudoku (which he always beats me at) Chinese chess (ditto), and Chinese classics (can't read 'em to save my life). Once, I asked him to explain the economic crisis, he conversed with me for two hours about it. It was like being given a free lecture.

I've always admired my father; I still do. Contrasting his impoverished background against how well off we are now, it is hard to imagine how he overcame all these obstacles to be where he is right now. But over the years I've been taking a more in-depth look at his success and how circumstances in his life have prodded him along the way, and here's what I found.

My father was the youngest of seven children. He was male. Being the youngest and male in the family meant one thing – he was spoiled by his siblings and his relatives. The gap between him and his oldest sibling is roughly around twenty years or so, and by the time he started school he had several sisters, as well as aunts, pampering over him. While theymight not have been well off, my grandparents had, by then, grown-up children who could help with the burden of providing for her other children.

It was also during my father's childhood that Taiwanese education was at its peak. Built on the education policies that were launched in the 1950s, the country began to invest in public and private education at a rate that “far outstripped most countries with similar resources.” In fact, in 1961 (a year before my father was born), primary and secondary schools received 80% of all public education funds. When my dad attended the best high school in Taipei, he was already being taughted by professors and teachers with graduate degrees from the United States.

In addition, during the 1980s, Taiwanese economy boomed and it was coined one of the “Four Asian Tigers” (along with Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore). My father was there at a time when jobs were plenty and he didn't need (and could not afford) an overseas graduate degree to get a decent job.

In 1998, when I was five, IBM offered my father a higher position in China, with multiple benefits, and we moved to Beijing. For the next ten or so years, China's economy boomed exponentially and with the right investments, my family gained from China's growing prosperity. My father now has the ability to send one daughter to college in the States, another to graduate school in Switzerland. We live comfortably. We have a house, a car and a gorgeous black Labrador named Grace. Plus, my father has way too many shoes to count.

My father's background, as well as his timing in both Taiwan and China, were lucky gems for him. Things would have turned out differently if my grandparents had not fled to Taiwan after the civil war; my father would've had to experience the Cultural Revolution. This meant, crucially, a halt in education for a couple of years (and instead, forced labor in the fields). If my father was not given the opportunity to move to China, we would not have been given the chance to flourish in a one of the world's fastest growing economies. 

My father always tells me, there were so many more hard-working and smarter people than him in college. There was a guy who could read his textbook once and still ace every exam (a useful skill to have). There were other guys who would sleep only two or three hours a day, and to make sure they wouldn't sleep for more, they never slept on comfortable beds, only on straw mats.Yet my father has had luck and opportunity thrown upon him time and time again, and with these countless chances, he has achieved the extraordinary: a young, poor boy grew up to able to afford the best education for his daughters, to enjoy vacations, and to never go hungry again.