BEIJING: A record 11.93 million people trooped to examination rooms across the country on Tuesday as the annual national college entrance exams, known as gaokao, officially kicked off, which is also considered China’s most important exams as it will play an important role in shaping examinees’ fate. Dubbed as a generation of the COVID-19 era, high school graduates of China this year have gone through a special and challenging path as the past two years of fighting the epidemic.
As usual, the essay questions on the first day of gaokao, widely seen as a reflection of the country’s general public values, sparked heated discussions online. By including anecdotes from Chinese classics the Story of Stone, revolutionary culture of the Communist Party of China based on the materials such as the Long March, the Untold Story – a book by an American journalist that chronicles an unprecedented journey in the military history, and Beijing, as the world’s first city to hold dual Olympics, those essay questions embody both philosophy and understanding of current affairs, requiring students’ logical thinking with their own reflection on reality, observers said.
These young people, who are also known as Generation Z born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, are believed to be much more confident and optimistic in the face of different challenges, and for some of them, taking the most important exams under epidemic restrictions is just one of those challenges that they will eventually overcome. This year, the quarantine policy is particularly strict, and the students have been studying at home since May for the exams, a mother of a student from the Experimental High School attached to Beijing Normal University, surnamed Luan, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
By following the epidemic prevention measures issued by the government, the school collects body temperature data and daily itinerary of the students to ensure their safety, and also require parents to submit their health code, she said. “I’m more nervous than my son. My son and his classmates were born after SARS and are taking the exams during COVID-19. It’s not easy,” the mother said.
A total of 330,000 test sites were set up across the country. Places including Beijing, Northeast China’s Liaoning and Southwest China’s Sichuan set up special locations for 12 infected students who are in Fangcang makeshift hospitals. Nationwide, 120 students under quarantine took the exams at test rooms at their quarantine venues, according to media reports.
Since gaokao resumed more than 40 years ago, it has been conveying a great significance for Chinese youth in their path of growing up. This is considered as the fairest and most effective way to select candidates for college and this system still has a strong vitality, Zhang Yiwu, a Peking University professor, told the Global Times.
–The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
