New tech force

Dong, the truck driver-turned-manager, has long possessed a passion for the language that has influenced his son, Dong Zhongli, who was born in 1985. He began to use a tape recorder to listen to English recordings in his early years and achieved high scores in English exams throughout his student years during the 1990s.

In the late 1990s, the growth of internet use for English-language learning stimulated fledgling distance-learning platforms where video lessons were recorded and broadcast online, providing people with a quality alternative or supplement to on-the-ground courses.

To prepare himself for the College English Test, Dong Zhongli "found it useful to watch online courses" and purchased an online video course in 2004 offered by Koolearn, an online education provider affiliated to New Oriental.

A decade later he was pleasantly surprised when he became a star teacher at the company, teaching livestreaming lessons online to help thousands of university students pass their CETs. He also uses the Chinese social-media platform, Sina Weibo, to share short videos in which he explains individual language points in an engaging way that has earned him over 400,000 followers. Now an internet celebrity, Dong Zhongli's enthusiastic teaching style continues to gain popularity among live-streaming viewers in the field of English-language learning.

"In the age of the information explosion, idolizing a teacher is an efficient way to motivate students," he says.

In recent years, New Oriental has actively ridden the wave of applying artificial intelligence technology to the field of education by cooperating with AI service providers, such as the Molistudy startup.

AI technology is set to revolutionize the way in which Chinese people learn foreign languages, according to Molistudy founder Zhang Haixia, 32, a graduate from the School of Software and Microelectronics at Peking University. Zhang says that with the help of AI teachers, people will be able to grasp the basic rules of English in a relatively short period, receive personalized study plans and enjoy one-on-one interactive classes.