Teacher’s Day: Xu Zhihui, Basketball & Exclusive Jerseys

2025/09/10 21:37
Jiaohuidian News

[Editor’s Note]In recent years, some teachers with “special skills” are quietly becoming popular. In the classroom, they are the guides for deep academic cultivation on the three-foot podium; outside the classroom, they are food archaeologists, insect poets, stadium athletes, intangible cultural heritage writers, and internet celebrity bloggers… Why are they “popular”? What kind of expectations do people expect from teachers? Today is the 41st Teachers’ Day. The reporter approached a group of “cross-border” teachers and explored their “traffic” password.

“We prepared a surprise for Teacher Xu and gave him a jersey.” On the eve of Teacher’s Day, a group of students from Nanjing Agricultural University were secretly preparing a special Teacher’s Day gift. The “Teacher Xu” they called was Xu Zhihui, a teacher at the School of Resources and Environmental Sciences of Nanjing Agricultural University who loves to play basketball.

Many years ago, Xu Zhihui, who was a student at Nanjing Agricultural University at that time, was practicing balls while the heat was not dissipating. He did not expect that this crisp sound of slapping the ball would break the door to his fate with Chen Qirong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and pave a path of education with two-way empowerment of “sports + scientific research”. “The young man played the ball very seriously. What experiments are he doing now?” It turned out that Academician Chen is also a basketball enthusiast. During the chat, Xu Zhihui talked about his interest in soil microbial research, and his eyes were shining. Academician Chen saw the resilience needed to do scientific research from his concentration when playing basketball. Later, he became Academician Chen’s “apprentice” and took root in scientific research together.

Today, Xu Zhihui is not only a rigorous scientific researcher in the laboratory, but also an active “teammate” on the court. He often said: “Basketball and scientific research don’t look aligned, but the core is exactly the same.” In his eyes, basketball is not a “scoring show”. Those “mistakes” that grab rebounds, do defense, and pass every ball well are more important than high scores in a single game. Just like in the scientific research team, not everyone has to be a “project leader”. Some people focus on data sorting, some people work in experimental operations and are willing to sacrifice “exposure” for the team to get a tough bone. The winning and losing on the court is more like the setbacks in scientific research: “Only you have to fall behind and never give up, you can fight for a reversal; only if you fail ten times of experiments are not discouraged can you wait for a breakthrough.” He always observes students on the court: those children who are willing to run open spaces and take the initiative to make up for defense are often more collaborative in scientific research; students who do not complain and review the game immediately can withstand the pressure when facing the bottleneck of the experiment.

This concept of “sports education” also extends to his daily relationship with students. Xu Zhihui always plays ball with students. In addition, he also insists on running 5 kilometers twice a week. What he remembers most was a relay race at the Teachers and Students Games last year. At that time, he received a temporary task and formed a team with three students he had never met to participate in the 4×100-meter relay, and finally won the third place.

He felt that the fate between university teachers and students should not be only in class: “I am their teammate when playing basketball, and I am their ‘study’ when running. At this time, talking about scientific research and life is closer than in the office.” Xu Zhihui said that scientific research is serious, but educating people can be very warm, just like basketball requires cooperation, and education requires companionship. “Being able to watch students grow in scientific research and be happy in sports is the happiest thing for me as a teacher.”

Planner Zhang Lin and Yang Pinping

Coordinating Fan Yuli

Execute Yang Pinping, Ge Lingdan Cheng Xiaolin Ye Zhen

Text Yang Pinping Cheng Xiaolin