Global Times is running a neat feature on its Facebook page (yes, Global Times has a Facebook page) in which it posts sample questions from China's National College Entrance Exam, i.e. gaokao. Its headline asks: So you think you’re smarter than a Chinese high school student? Oh hell no, no one thinks they're smarter than Chinese high school students. We're all reeling from years of alcohol abuse and our hea ...

Unless you did. In which case, sorry. I'm sure there's a Western equivalent that's as traumatic and possibly intellectually growth-stunting as the Chinese college entrance exam process. Binge drinking? Drugs? I don't know what the equivalent is. Gaokao, of course, commences today, as does national mourning for the country's youth. To a childhood dying young -- eyes the shady test has shut. ...

It's every student's worst nightmare: sitting in the most important test of your life, you're told out of the blue that time's up. You look at your sheet and realize that 13 questions remain unanswered. Impossible, you think, because you have taken a million practice tests and you know exactly how much time it takes to complete one of these. "Teacher, I think we have more time," you protest, though to no av ...

It's unclear when this picture was taken, but it appeared on 王浩然vic's Weibo yesterday. Netizens have expressed bemusement. Why this young lady needs a desk to read is a question I'll not answer here. Instead, I'll point you to Helen Gao's recent article in The Atlantic about gaokao. One feels compelled to rip the desk away, tell the young lady, "Go play soccer!" But as Gao points out, "Education experts in ...

We’ll have to wait until July before the results of the gaokao – national university entrance exams – are announced. When they are, state media's response will be as predictable and reflexive as British media et alia sticking an attractive blonde celebrating her A-levels on the front page (and pages 2,3,5,8 and 9). The top scorers become instant overnight celebrities. No craziness is spared, with "posters a ...

It was only last year that I stopped having one particular recurring nightmare: I would be back in high school or college, and it would be the day before a big exam, and it would dawn on me that I had never attended any classes; or I would totally forget that I had even signed up for a course; or I would discover that I was a chronic class-cutter; that kind of thing. I have no idea why these scenarios impla ...

More than an hour after we published the latest edition of Yishus, in which Lola B wrote, "Chinese students go to art school to make money," but the "the main path, if not the only path, into a top art school is through the art gaokao (college entrance exam) that judges technical skill alone," China Daily published a cover story on essentially the same subject, except its approach -- as the headline will su ...