Nearly 13 million young adults entered exam rooms across China on Wednesday morning to sit for the college entrance test, or “gaokao,” a record high number since matriculation resumed in 1977.
The exact number of applicants for this year is 12.91 million, an increase of 980,000 from last year, according to the Ministry of Education. Their exams will last from two to four days, depending on their choice of subjects.
Wu Zongxin said he dreams of studying for a fire-science degree and becoming a firefighter. “I know it could be a dangerous job, but I want to do something significant for society, instead of living an ordinary life,” he said.
Unlike his peers, Wu needs hearing aids to listen and communicate, the aftermath of a severe infection at childhood. But that never stopped him doing well at school. He is to graduate this summer from Zhizhen High School in Hengshui, a city in north China’s Hebei Province known for its students’ good performance in the gaokao exams.
Wu likes to think positively about his hearing loss. “At the end of the day, all I need to do is to remove my hearing aids and go to bed,” he said. “No one can disturb my sleep.”
His teacher Chen Jie described him as “an intelligent young man with a strong character.”
“He wants to be treated as a healthy, normal student,” Chen added.
Yet Wu is relieved that he is exempt from the English listening test, in line with the Ministry of Education’s special policy for hearing-impaired students. “I really worried about this part of the exam,” he said. “Now I’m more at ease.”
STRESS MANAGEMENT
China’s college admission rate has seen a significant rise in recent years. Even so, the gaokao is widely recognized as one of the world’s toughest college entrance exams, mainly because admission relies primarily on exam results, rather than an overall estimation of a student’s academic performance over a period of time.
Fan Xuanzhi, a candidate in Beijing, managed her stress well. She turned down her parents’ offer of a hotel room next to the test center, insisting instead on sleeping in her own bed. She also made a short video to thank her parents for their love, which she presented to them on Tuesday night.
Many other students still need a pat on the shoulder from teachers and parents.
A teacher at the Hengshui No. 13 Middle School made a giant piece of wall art out of 2,023 used pen refills collected from his students since they started their final year at high school in September. Chen Chen, a biology teacher, made a sailboat by gluing together the refills and pieces of wood. The project took him three months.
“This represents my best wishes for my students in the class of 2023,” Chen said in an interview with Xinhua. “I hope they will all be brave and chase their dreams.”
The artwork, 3.5 meters long and 1.8 meters tall, came as a pleasant surprise for the students when it appeared in the common area of the school building on Sunday evening. Many wrote down their names, dream universities and gaokao target scores in the blank space.
“I cannot believe that we used so many pen refills over the past months,” said He Yubing, a student in Chen’s class. “The hard work will pay off.” Xinhua
