In Hong Kong, Flashy Test Tutors Gain Icon Status

This article from the front page of today's WSJ is sort of ridiculous and hilarious, but it also underscores why this will be the Asian century: while our culture worships pop stars, rappers, athletes and (egads!) hedge fund managers, Asian cultures by and large worship education (though they've taken testing to an extreme -- we need to do more, they need to do less!):

Hong Kong parents are often desperate to help  their children succeed in this city's pressure-cooker public-examination  system, which determines students' college-worthiness. That explains why many  are willing to pay handsomely for extracurricular help. Mr. Eng and others  like him have made a lucrative business out of tapping that demand. They use  flashy, aggressive marketing tactics that have transformed them into  scholastic pop stars -- "tutor gods," as they're known in Cantonese.
 
Private tutoring is big business around the world.  Programs that help people prepare for standardized tests -- such as SAT-prep  courses in the U.S. -- have become a multibillion-dollar industry. Tutoring  agencies are also booming in places like mainland China and Japan. Several  years ago, Hong Kong's government estimated that the city's families spent  nearly half a billion dollars a year on tutoring.
 
Hong Kong stands out, though, for instructors who  boldly tout their success rate -- and their own images. They pay to have their  faces plastered throughout the city on 40-foot-high billboards and the sides  of double-decker buses.

-----------------

In Hong Kong, Flashy Test Tutors Gain Icon Status
With Faces on Billboards, 'Gods' Promise Top Scores;
Mr. Ng's Two Ferraris
By JONATHAN CHENG
August 14, 2007; Page A1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118704217688396420.html?mod=hps_us_pageone

HONG KONG -- When Richard Eng isn't teaching English grammar to high-school students, he might be cruising around Hong Kong in his Lamborghini Murciélago. Or in Paris, on one of his seasonal shopping sprees. Or relaxing in his private, custom-installed karaoke room festooned with giant Louis Vuitton logos.  Mr. Eng, 43 years old, is one of Hong Kong's best-known celebrity "tutor gods."