Although differences in academic motivation may exist across cultures, research on academic motivational goals has been Western-focused and relied on Western originated questionnaire. There is a dearth of studies adopting bottom-up, emic, and in-depth approaches to explore East Asian students' academic motivation. This study describes Chinese students' academic motivational goals in their own words. Participants were 28 11th-grade students (Mage = 16.1 years, age range: 15-17 years, including 15 males) from urban, rural, and suburban regions. They were interviewed in individual sessions and asked open-ended questions, such as "Why do you engage in academic tasks?" Inductive content analyses suggested that these students wanted to do well academically or engage in academic tasks for a wide variety of reasons. Among these, the most salient were: (1) to obtain college admission and elevate social status; (2) performance-oriented reasons; (3) to master the knowledge and develop competence; (4) family-oriented reasons; and, (5) personal interest. Furthermore, their responses suggested many students viewed education as a means to an end. They sought to (1) master knowledge and gain good results on college admission examination for upward social mobility; and, (2) to achieve high performance and outperform others for family-oriented reasons.