Stellar Student: L-W senior, a native of China, hopes to attend Stanford

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Lincoln-Way East senior Xue “Shirley” Zhan, 17, of Mokena plans to go into international relations. | Brett Roseman~Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 1, 2012 8:00AM

Like many high school students, Xue “Shirley” Zhan, a senior at Lincoln-Way East High School in Frankfort, is studying foreign languages.

She is taking Spanish and also has studied Japanese. While she is educated in these two languages, she also is fluent in two dialects of Chinese, Mandarin and Shanghaiese, the latter being a local dialect found in Shanghai.

“I grew up with languages,” said Zhan, who currently is ranked first in her class, “and I consider English and Chinese my primary languages.”

Zhan, whose parents, Mark and Yafei Zhan, are from China but now reside in Mokena, had a jet set childhood.

She moved to the United States at the age of 2, so her first words were speaking Mandarin Chinese with her family. At 8, she moved back to China and then returned to the United States at 11.

The moves, she said, were due to her father’s job but ended up being beneficial.

“My family really wanted me to be in constant contact with my own culture. I strengthened my Chinese speaking and writing abilities and living in China was a lot of help and a lot of fun,” she said.

While she has resided in the United States for several years, Zhan makes it a point to return to China for lengthy summer visits every year or every other year.

“I like visiting a different part of China every summer,” she said. “I went to the northwest region last summer — to the province of Gansu where a lot of Tibetans reside. It is a poorer region and I wanted to communicate with the people and understand what they had to say.”

Zhan’s grandparents on her mother’s side, Husheng Zhu and Hanliang Liu, who live in China, are her biggest mentors.

“They are my second parents. They’ve done the most in terms of raising me and teaching me moral and personal philosophies,” Zhan said.

“They motivate me and encourage me the most. When I went back to China for three years, my family and I lived with grandparents. They have always placed academics to be very important. They taught me how to act as a person, not just as a student,” she said.

At Lincoln-Way East, Zhan is active with mathletes, scholastic bowl, the international club, Key Club, Mu Alpha Theta which is the math honor society, Pi Sigma Pi, which is the history honor society, and she is president of the National Honor Society. She also plays varsity badminton.

Zhan said the cultures of the Chicago area and China are very different and yet similar in many respects.

“I consider myself a city girl because I grew up in Shanghai, which is comparable to New York or Chicago, but culturally there are many differences,” she said. “The biggest factor that I feel is different in China is that there’s more a sense of independence. There, I ride a local Metra and commute a lot on my own.”

Zhan has applied to nine schools for her post-high school career. Her first choice is Stanford University in California.

“I didn’t apply to any schools in the Midwest,” she said. “All my choices are coastal schools because I want a change of scenery for college.”

Not surprisingly, she plans to go into international relations.

“I don’t want to limit myself to anything political, but I am considering being a translator, journalist or a governmental job is another option. It is very much opened ended at this point,” she said.

There’s no mistake that Zhan is driven.

“I think it has to do with the work ethic that comes with being an immigrant,” she said. “I’ve seen the sacrifices my parents had to make to come to this country and I appreciate my life. I want to get to a place where the sacrifices my family had to make don’t go in vain.”