Introduction to "Golden Corridor: Grade 12"
The story is set in Valley View Public High School in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles and revolves around Chinese-American teenager Lin Youcheng. He bid farewell to the fixed classes of ordinary high schools in China and immigrated to California to enter the 11th grade. He faced the huge impact of the American free-class credit system and tiered curriculum system. In this corridor of the teaching building, which is called the "golden corridor" by students, there are AP students who are aiming for prestigious schools. On the other side of the corridor are teenagers who have chosen vocational courses and plan to find employment directly after graduation.
Lin Youcheng gets to know Maya, a Latina girl who bears the burden of the family, Azhe, a second-generation Chinese who refuses to be involved and is determined to start a business, Kevin, a white elite who is pursuing an offer from an Ivy League school, and Zhou Ruotong, who transferred from a private high school. Everyone is constantly colliding with each other in course selection games, college applications, and daily schoolwork, and they get a glimpse of the huge resource gap between public and private schools.
The novel unfolds along the complete timeline of grades 11 and 12, truly presenting the life of the application season commonly known as "senior year of high school", exploring the pros and cons of the two education models in China and the United States, and tearing apart the class rifts under the halo of American education. When the graduation bell rings, the teenagers make their own choices, which proves that there is no perfect education system, and all roads need to be pursued by themselves.
