A true fox spirit （狐狸精）in real world？

An anecdote on China Daily arouse my interest today: A vixen stole over 100 pairs of shoes in German town of Foehren. Is she a Fox Spirit (Huli Jing, 狐狸精) in love with high-heeled shoes? J

Fox Spirit is a well-known character in Chinese mythology. They are beautiful, enchanting and capable of acquiring human forms. It is a common role in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异), authored by Pu Songling of Qing dynasty . Normally, the Fox spirits are seen as dangerous, who seduce male for purposes. “Fox sprits” is used as a negative term to describe bad women seduce married man. The judgment for this character is controversial. Male have mixed feeling of hate and affection.

In Germany, the vixen stole shoes for her cubs to play with.

U.S. type exam

I finished my Regulatory Affairs Certification exam last Friday. It is a good timing to compare U.S. type exam and Chinese type exam. There must be some people want to argue the point, is there different style of EXAM?

Exam. A extremely familiar word for Chinese student, who studies for and lives on exam. Till date, I am not able to count how many exam I have taken. For people like my age, their situation is similar. We experience various exams from elementary through college. Even we began our career, different professional certification are presented in front of us. CPA for accounting professional, CFA for finance people, and for me Me, I have RAC... So, what’s my understanding of their difference?

1^st: Scope: guideline V.S. unlimited:

I still remember motivation of buying a magic book, Teacher’s Reference, when I was a high school student. Literally, Teacher’s Reference is for teacher rather than student. The only reason is for guideline, which will tell us the scope of the course. Another example will be High School qualification exam. Students were given special guideline for preparation. Gradually, we are trained to memorize knowledge instead of understanding and application.

In contrast, there is no scope for U.S type exam. Understanding and application is test goal. Take my RAC exam as an example: Case analysis accounts for sixty percent of the whole exam. Exam question asked the BEST answer not the right one… Memorization based exam always ask RIGHT answer, while application driven question ask BEST answer.

2^nd Pressure: tension V.S. ease

Pressure is usually caused by others. Hundreds of exam taker sit in one small room is quite normal. It is common that Chinese student, like me, feel tension before exam. How can I feel ease when I saw many faces in contemplation.

While in the RAC exam, exam takers are free to pick any day within exam opening window, from April to June. Due to it is an internet based exam, we also feel free to choose examination site. Accordingly, when I reported to the examination site last Friday, to my surprise, there are ONLY three persons were taking DIFFERENT exam… So, I do not need to spend time on peeking at other’s answer! LOL! No pressure.

In addition, no proctors walk around… they are another source of pressure. We are trusted to be honest in the U.S. while we are suspected to be cheating in China. …