首都师范大学
Yuan graduated from Capital Normal University with a major in Chinese history, and had since been teaching Chinese history in various Beijing high schools. He came to popular attention when videos of his history courses were posted online in 2008. The videos were classroom recordings made by a Beijing cram school, for which Yuan was moonlighting, and made available online behind the school's paywall. The videos were copied, presumably without any authorization, and posted to other free video-sharing websites.