Still, it is the Bei Ying stories of the few getting that elusive break for the silver screen that continue to inspire and fuel students - stories like those of Huang Lu.

Huang, from Chengdu of Sichuan province, was 20 when she clinched a spot in Bei Ying's popular performance institute in 2003.

She defied her parents who worked in a scientific institute on nuclear physics and decided to be an actress after she got a taste of the big screen in a two-minute appearance in Hong Kong director Johnnie To's romantic comedy Love For All Seasons (Bainian Haohe) a year earlier.

She crossed her first major hurdle when her parents found out she actually got into Bei Ying - ranking ninth among about 8,000 applicants that year.

"My dad also relented in his opposition to my becoming an actress he said getting into Bei Ying was even harder than entering Tsinghua University," Huang says.

Huang endured a brutal winter in her first year at Bei Ying, where the bitter cold added to her misery as a lonely student competing with more outgoing classmates.

But the turning point for Huang came in 2006, when she was plucked out of the classroom to debut in Chinese director Li Yang's Blind Mountain (Mang Shan). Huang played the lead role of a gritty college student sold into a forced marriage in a village in Shaanxi province's Qinling Mountains.

The movie screened at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and Huang walked the red carpet as a Bei Ying senior wearing a 10,000-yuan gown. She has become the envy of the school's aspiring stars ever since.

"Bei Ying helped me into this circle, to get my foot in the door and know the right people," says Huang, who now has acted in 12 full-length feature films in four years.

"The academy presents the opportunities, but ultimately it's up to your personal strengths and skill sets if you want to succeed," she says.

For Bei Ying students such as Liu Lichang, the glitz and glamor of the "reel world" that have touched Huang will have to wait.

There are classes to take and career paths to plan.

"My goal is to become a top cinematographer like Zhang Yimou or Gu Changwei," Liu says.

"The best thing I've gotten from Bei Ying so far is that I know what I want now, I know the direction I should take and what I should live for. It is film."

(China Daily January 6, 2009)