The hit TV series A Love for Separation, starring Huang Lei (right) and Hai Qing (third from right), is about Chinese parents sending their teenage children to study abroad. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In 2006, Lu Qiang toured the United States to visit some famous universities.

The veteran reporter saw a number of Chinese there, most of whom had begun their US educations in middle school.

"They had left home as teenagers."

But this was a departure from the past.

"Earlier, most Chinese went abroad to study after graduation," says Lu, better known by his pseudonym, Lu Yingong.

Realizing what he was witnessing was unprecedented－in later years, it led to headlines about Chinese students abroad "getting younger"－Lu decided to document what he saw.

The then deputy editor-in-chief of the Hangzhou-based Qianjiang Evening News started by interviewing Chinese students in Russia in 2007 and Japan a few years later.