want to help relieve human physical suffering), but also know to what path to
attach their energy, dedication, emotion, and action (e.g., therefore I will
study medicine and all knowledge I need to achieve this goal). Therefore, the
process of lizhi is a spiritually uplifting and emotionally positive process. In
the words of respondents, “she had a far-reaching ambition for her lifelong
learning, that is, to help human beings achieve true equality,” “he established
a will to become a political leader; learning then became an internalized obli-
gation for him. He couldn’t stop learning from that point on.”
Notice that lizhi is not to be confused with career goal setting, although it
may coincide with it, but searching for an inspirational purpose in the large
framework of the three purposes discussed earlier in order to channel one’s
lifelong learning. Here, Liu Xiang’s story sets a good example of lizhi for the
king to start to self-cultivate even at age seventy.
Some U.S. respondents also touched on personal ambitions. However,
such cases were not described consistently as a deliberate and socially con-
certed process where the learner is urged to search for a purpose and to estab-
lish commitment to reaching that goal for life.
Love, passion, and thirst were described similarly as enjoyment among
U.S. model learners for both purposes and processes of learning. However, a
significant difference lies in the source of such affect between the two cul-
tures’ learners. Whereas for the U.S. learners, intrinsic enjoyment, curiosity,
and motivation were described as essential, this intrinsic source was not em-
phasized by Chinese respondents. In fact, many of the respondents acknowl-
edged that their model learners were initially not motivated or interested in
learning when they were young, but they developed love and passion once
they realized the importance of learning for their lives or once their parents
and teachers guided them into the process. Much like Liu Xiang’s king, his
love for learning initially lay dormant or perhaps didn’t exist; it was his sub-
ject who awakened or helped generate his love. One respondent gave the fol-
lowing testimony:
He actually was a naughty kid when he was young. He didn’t like to learn. But
his parents demanded that he learn. His teachers also had high expectations of
him and helped him. By and by, his attitude improved, and he began tasting the
joy of learning. Probably in high school he realized that learning is his need to
self-perfect, and after that he always has passion for learning.This kind of formation of love and passion as cultivated and fostered by one’s
social world parallels the recent work on intrinsic motivation as less essential
for Asian-American children for school learning by Iyengar and Lepper
(1999).
Respect is another distinct affect that Chinese model learners express to-
ward knowledge and teachers in the form of humility. Because learning in the
- AMERICAN AND CHINESE LEARNERS 409