Zhang Peng, a 38-year-old doctoral supervisor of Sun Yat-sen University, is the only "Dr. Monkey" who is engaged in primate research in China.

Zhang Peng was so popular with this title that he even changed the head of WeChat to that of a doctor in a hooded gown with an intimate monkey on his shoulder. After the name of WeChat, "Dr. Ape" is also indicated in brackets.

In order to know how smart monkeys really are, Zhang Peng spent 10 years looking for the answer-dropping out of Peking University for a master's degree in psychology; Eat and live with more than 800 monkeys, soak in hot springs together, and have a "monkey girlfriend"; Now returning to China, as a professor of anthropology at Sun Yat-sen University, he is also the only science tutor of liberal arts in the school. He wrote 96 letters to the school leaders to build a laboratory for liberal arts students.

Some people say that Zhang Peng is as grotesque as the characters in fairy tales; In order to get his doctorate, someone went wave after wave, lost and fought. Yesterday, in an exclusive interview with the Beijing News reporter, he responded to all kinds of labels on his body one by one and said frankly, "Sometimes it is very contradictory and lonely."

Admitted to Peking University, dropped out as a postdoctoral student in psychology.

Beijing News: Why did you spend more than ten years obsessed with monkeys?

Zhang Peng: I study biochemistry at Northwest University as an undergraduate, and I often stay in the laboratory. My employment goal should also be to engage in biopharmaceuticals, but I don't want to do this. I always wanted to work in the field, so I took zoology as a graduate student. For three years, I almost lived in the Qinling Mountains and met many golden monkeys. At that time, I thought monkeys were very smart, so I really wanted to know how smart monkeys really were. More importantly, by understanding the intelligence of monkeys, we can learn more about the origin of human beings, so I want to continue my research on primates. In China, the academic research in this field is still in a very weak stage, so I will go to Peking University to study for a doctorate in psychology. My tutor is also the only one who studies monkey psychology in China. I want to understand the psychology of monkeys, so as to understand the origin of human psychology.

Beijing News: Later, you dropped out of Peking University and got a doctorate in psychology. Why did you make such a choice?

Zhang Peng: I was admitted to Peking University in 2003, during the SARS period. I'm not allowed to leave school after I come, but it's more troublesome because I'm an interdisciplinary candidate. I had to prepare for a period of time, so I had no place to live, so I lived in the autopsy room and lived with monkeys for three months. Later, I was admitted, but the notice from Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan came, because they took a fancy to my article about the social organization description of wild golden monkey in the Journal of Zoology and gave me a full scholarship. I was struggling.

My parents are factory workers, and I was admitted to Peking University as a doctor. The whole factory thinks this is a big event, beating gongs and drums and posting red sheets. After I proposed to drop out of Peking University and go to Kyoto University, my family held five family meetings, and every time I was unanimously opposed. But I decided to drop out of school and go to Japan. On the day I left, only my mother came to see me off, which was unacceptable to all my family.

What's even more embarrassing is that I was admitted to the doctor's degree as a tutor, and then I dropped out of school, but my tutor understood me very well, because Kyoto University is the highest institution in the world that studies monkeys, so she supported me in the past.

Beijing News: Did you encounter any difficulties in giving up so many trips to Japan and starting over with a master's degree?

Zhang Peng: I didn't tell me until I reported to Kyoto University and asked me to get my master's degree again. This is a good pit. I haven't passed the first exam yet. I was depressed at that time, but I was afraid to tell my family. I had to study hard for half a year and take the exam again. I was finally admitted.

Another difficulty is that I can't speak Japanese. Studying monkeys requires frequent visits to villages and mountains. Japanese farmers can only speak Japanese, and English is useless no matter how good it is. Language barrier, and in a foreign mountain village, from the beginning, survival became a problem. In order to solve this problem, I carried a Japanese tape to the field and listened to Japanese textbooks every day. Two years, Japanese reached the first level.