Here are some historical archives may be of interest to the general public.
After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping started a policy of opening to the Western world. Since the diplomatic relation with the U.S. was established in January 1979, Deng proposed a plan to send students to U.S. universities. His plan was controversial in China, because those students might not want to come back. His plan was also controversial for the U.S. universities, because in China, there were no standard tests as TOFEL and GRE. T. D. Lee, a Nobelist and physics professor at Columbia University, proposed a “Chines U.S. Physics Examination and Administration” (CUSPEA) progran to use the physics doctorial qualifying exam (or that like) as the entrance exam in China. The first of such exam was conducted in Spring 1979. Five Chinese students were admitted to Columbia University in Fall 1979.
In October 1980, Columbia University’s newspaper Record published a report entitled
T_D_Lee’s_Exam_in_China_Brings_Phycists_to_the_U_S
announcing the inauguration of CUSPEA program in many major U.S. universities.
Meanwhile in China, the initial success of those Chinese students at Columbia University was seen as a justification of Deng’s open policy and Professor T. D. Lee’s CUSPEA program. A lengthy report was published on a Chinese newspsper in October 1980. An important reference of that story, a Technical Report, is also posted here. The author, Ms. Qi Shuying, is a highly respectable contemporary Chinese biographist. She published a 10-volume Opera Omnia in 2012. Afterwards, she was still quite active. Recently, she published two volumes of poems, and she enjoys autographing her books in the public. Abridged versions of the above lengthy report were published in China on many newspapers and journals, including one on Qingnian Wenzhai (Youth Digest) in February 1981. It was posted on Baidu in plain text, readily to be downloaded and translated into English using Google Translate by cut-and-paste. Here is an English version after some light editing to improve readability:
A_Young_Physicist_Grown_Up_in_Adversity.
Note that my Chinese name was Chen Chengjun. After naturalized as a U.S. citizen on June 13, 1991, my official name was registered as Chengjun Julian Chen.