As if devastating childhoods and leaving psychological scars weren’t enough, gaokao also tears apart families. Gaokao, you ass.

This story via Global Times:

The father of a 13-year-old boy who has been found safe this week after running away from home due to scoring poorly on his third gaokao (or national college entrance examination) attempt said that he regrets pushing his son so hard.

Okay, so the good news is the boy is safe. But… he’s 13. Why is he taking national college entrance exams?

The young boy, Zhang Zhe, who was considered a genius before the age of just 10, when he took his first gaokao, was discovered at a friend’s place by his aunt on Monday, the boy’s father, Zhang Jun, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

He has failed his last two gaokao attempts, because he’s 13, and gaokao is notoriously fucking insane.

The young Zhang disappeared Friday, fearing that his repeated gaokao disappointments only served him to be a great “burden” for his father.

Each test costs 7,000 yuan. That would buy about 300 soccer balls, which would serve his young child about 300 times better at his current stage in life.

Zhang’s father said that he never meant to make his son feel so overwhelmed.

“He had outstanding talent, and I believed that he would be able to achieve things that other children could not,” said Zhang’s father.

Like fail a gaokao test multiple times. Other children could not do that, because their fathers aren’t crazy.

Dad regrets pushing son to take gaokao (Global Times, h/t Alicia)

Scores are in for China’s National College Entrance Exams. But as 9 million test-takers are assessed by a number, it’s interesting to note that the one exam garnering the most attention from the press features an essay that scored no number at all — a zero.

Please take a look at the work of one Sichuan student who dared to provide an honest, original answer to a question about “Chinese equilibrium.” As translated by chinaSMACK, the answer begins:

When I saw this essay prompt, I suddenly felt an urge to laugh. Yes, that’s right; I wanted to laugh. It’s as if I could see the deathly grim face of the grader through this piece of test paper.

Does he have your attention, test-grader?

It goes on.

When the second-generation rich drive their sports cars, flowers in hand, into school campuses chasing after chicks, when the exhaust of the sports car roars and blows into my face, I think, why isn’t my dad Li Gang? This kind of cynicism spread through my body, and made me dispirited and downcast. But then, the feats of Guo Meimei reinvigorated me. When there isn’t a biological father to rely on, there’s always someone called a “godfather” ["sugar daddy"]. Unfortunately, godfathers don’t take on godsons.

You get the idea. Perhaps intimidated by this high schooler — displaying more critical thinking in one paragraph than most Chinese students over a dozen years — the grader gave this a 0. Better to deal with those who break ranks by barring them from rejoining the ranks.

What is it that gaokao tests again? Obedience?

When we posted sample gaokao questions last month, we noted that “you have to train yourself to be the perfect little tool to score well on them.” The converse is true as well, it seems: if you elect not to be a trained seal, you’ll get the cudgel. A perfect little zero. And China still wonders why it doesn’t have innovators, specifically its own Steve Jobs? Newsflash, guys: there is a Steve Jobs somewhere in China, because there are 1.3 billion people here, and so by mere probability, there should be at least a handful of creative, success-driven, ambitious individuals who can change the world. You’ll never find them, of course, because the Chinese school system smothers this country’s future, one fact, one historical fib at a time. If Steve Jobs had gone to school in China, he would have, if lucky, found an entry-level position with Microsoft.

Although there is reason to be heartened. This kid’s essay made news, didn’t it? “Perhaps most tellingly,” reports the Economist, “the online response to such essays as these is overwhelmingly positive. Many of the posted comments say the individual efforts should be marked high for creativity.” Hopefully — and this is a long shot, but dream with me — fame and the feeling of doing honest intellectual work will make the test-taker feel like his or her effort was worth it.

‘Chinese-Style Justice’ – 0 Points Gaokao Essay from Sichuan (chinaSMACK)

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 heads are no longer filled with facts.

But even if we were smarter, would we be able to answer labyrinthine questions such as…

“High school must have been a wonderful time” — just a little leading and presumptuous, eh? Hey, question-maker: do you know how long they studied for your stupid, shitty exam, wasting away their youthful vigor and creativity? Have the common decency to not rub it in their faces while they are taking your exam, wouldja?

We’ve always known that gaokao questions were insane, and that you have to train yourself to be the perfect little tool to score well on them, but did you know some gaokao questions were thought up by third graders doing thought experiments? Look:

“If Edison was able to visit the 21st century” is a short stone’s throw away from, “If Jesus were alive today,” or, “If dinosaurs landed in San Diego…”

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Old McDonald’s farm was glorious and prosperous, except for foreign agents who hated cell phones. Explain your high school existence, keeping in mind Isaac Newton loves apples.

In conclusion, WHAT WOULD YOU DO if donkeys could mate with the skeletons of pigs?

And check out this explosive diarrhea of a question:

Again, that’s:

Everyday [sic] we strive for what we think is important, but there are more important things in this world. People have different opinions on the matter. Please select a point of view and write an essay about your thoughts.

Can I pick the point of view of a rubber duck?

Every day, afloat upon the patchy waters of Victora Harbor, I wake to a red sun that speaks to the cold flame of my solitude. There is an everlasting sadness that you cannot know, burning fierce in the east where the schoolchildren of our country once tilted their heads to sing. Where is that joy, now?

I look west, and the pebbly eyeballs which glance back are not round with a child’s wonder but flat like a jianbing, grown-up but not mature. The adults that stand at their side flick the butts of cigarettes at me, as if my skin, though made of rubber, does not react to the embers of their scorn.

They speak to me, too. They squawk and squeal and cluck in coarse imitation of language, but I do not understand because I am a duck and do not speak Cantonese. I turn my back, face south, the tears glistening behind plastic eyes, yet they do not stop. Nothing stops them. They come. More of them come. Like a great tsunami, the waves do not wane, they come, oh they come.

I am a duck. What do they want? What spiritual void can a duck fill? What dialectic truth can we discern, them on the shores, me on these choppy waters of Victoria Harbor, staring into a horizon that reflects the recesses of the human condition? Boundless, bottomless, what is the difference? Infinity that wallows, sinkholes of the soul which drag us down, past paper bills that flutter like falling butterflies. Their problems are copper, less real than these eyes under God’s blue sky.

I am a duck, a humble duck. The sun sets in the west and the cool comfort of night’s veil is pulled over my head. In this silence, I listen. There is the sound of water. The faraway exhale of a tugboat. And if I really try, something sweeter, something like laughter, from a child who was here, and thought it important.

Holy shit I would’ve flunked so hard.

(H/T China Digital Times; also see: this GT article)

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. Everyone knows the system is flawed, but there’s no way around it unless you have a lot of money (to study abroad, etc.), and besides, the problem cuts much deeper. At least the test is relatively objective though — relatively being the operative word — offering small hope to those who seek to better their lot. For many students living in the central provinces, it’s not much hope for a significantly better future, but it’s better than none.

Anyway. Some “good” news: for the fourth straight year, the number of test-takers has decreased. Reports Caixin: “The number of applicants fell by 180,000 this year compared to last year, the Ministry of Education said on June 5. Some 9.15 million students applied to take the test in 2012. The number of applicants peaked in 2008 at 10.5 million.” And, um, the economy is always boosted by this test: “Ahead of this year’s exam, on Friday and Saturday, hotels near test sites are fully booked, restaurants are offering free drinks and healthy ‘brain food,’ online stores are selling out of lucky charms, and parents are swarming to temples to pray – and in many cases make donations – for their children to score high marks,” notes Xinhua.

But look at the following pictures via blshe.com and tell me it isn’t sorrow for the immutability of human fate that you feel:

Also see: RFH’s post on real gaokao questions, and Faces of Gaokao 2012.

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 avail. No one around you is getting preferential treatment, so why should you? The timekeeper has rung the bell!

Something like this happened in central China this year, and as it turns out — the timekeeper did ring the bell early! The test was the gaokao, aka the National College Entrance Exam, only the most important test in a student’s life. Without recourse, 1,050 students handed their papers four minutes and 48 seconds early.

This one timekeeping mistake may cost the proctor one year of his life, which he will be spending in prison. Reuters reports:

The incident lead to thousands of students and parents gathering “multiple times” at the school and the local education bureau to demand that the government investigate, it said.

A court sentenced Xiao to one year in jail for negligence, Xinhua said.

The sentence, however, is likely to only be symbolic.

However, he was also given a one-year reprieve, Xinhua said, which means he may serve either very little or no time inside.

“Xiao was careless in his work and mistakenly rang the bell too early, resulting in adverse social impact,” the report added, citing a court statement.

But the point has been delivered, loud and clear: don’t ring the bell early. Too much is on the line for the kids and their immediate and future families to tolerate such a boneheaded mistake from one careless adult.

(H/T Vali)

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 China have debated the perks and flaws of the country’s rote teaching style for years, but most students, comfortably immersed in a system that rewards and reinforces their ability to memorize and emulate instead of to analyze and question, might not as easily realize its limits from the inside.”

(H/T Alicia)

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 and banners on the school gates and… news conferences” (China Daily), as well as interviews, even product placements, propelling these gawky youths into the public spotlight.

Schools compete to attract these zhuangyuan, as they are known, and even PKU and Tsinghua offer scholarships as high as 50,000 yuan to give these nebs a chance to reach for the starry, starry sky.

And then we never hear from them again.

New research suggests that all the IV drips and oxygen masks really aren’t worth it: real employers don’t care much for college qualifications, setting store instead by things such as work experience, “personal aptitudes, such as the ability to innovate and adapt to change,” personality and foreign-language skills. One tech start-up honcho says he gets “exhaustive resumes running as long as six pages,” but “only about 10% of the applicants he sees are properly qualified.”

Yet even as its efficacy declines, the gaokao now costs 80,000 times more than it did 30 years ago to sit, and parents show little sign of letting up on their kids to pass it. So what are the questions that are deemed so life-changing?

Here’s a round-up of this year’s essay questions, courtesy of Valentina Luo – along with how we’d have answered them:

[National Test 1]

I was helping my family with some farming work during a weekend and the field was very muddy due to the rains. I was carrying a lot of equipment on my shoulders and was afraid of falling over. My legs were shaking. My mom spotted it and told me to take off my shirt and shoes and try again. It was much easier. Eventually I brought the stuff to mom and she said, “It’s not that you can’t do it – you were too worried about getting your shirt dirty. By taking them off, you got rid of the unnecessary concerns.”

[BJC: If in doubt, get naked.]

[National Test 2]

A painter was asked to repaint a boat; he also fixed a hole on the boat although he wasn’t asked to. Several days later, the owner sent a large sum of money to the painter. “I was paid already,” the painter said. “This is for fixing the hole,” the owner of the boat said. “It was just convenient,” the painter replied. “When my children went out to sail, I thought they weren’t going to come back. But now they did. I should thank you for it.”

[BJC: When your plan to kill your kids goes awry, cover your tracks. Pay the man.]

[Beijing]

Old Ji is a railway security man and he works on a mountain. His job is to examine the railways to prevent the fallen stones and trees from affecting the trains. He salutes every time the train passes, and the train will honk its horn in return. What do these scenes remind of you?

[BJC: The good old days. The thing about Mao was, he always made the trains run on time.]

[Tianjin]

Two fish are swimming in a river. The older one asks, “How’s the water?” The younger one says, “I don’t know if it’s clean or cloudy.”

[BJC: A third fish swims by and says, "I a garoupa. I eat you." End of story.]

[Shanghai]

For the little shining in their hearts, people often let them go because they think that shines are really individual. But then they often recognise those shines in masters’ works.

[BJC: Kid's got the Shining? Better listen to what he says.]

[Chongqing]

A true story from a meat-processing factory: A worker was in the cold store when the door suddenly closed. He was stuck in there, struggling, for five hours. He was dying. Suddenly, the door opened, it was the security guard of the factory. Someone asked the security guy afterwards what made him do so, since it’s not part of his daily job. “I’ve worked here for 35 years, and he’s the only guy that says ‘good morning’ and ‘see you tomorrow’ every day to me, of all the hundreds of workers here. He said good morning to me today, but I never heard the other half.”

[BJC: Stop being an asshole to the security guard in your building.]

[Jiangsu]

Worry and love.

[BJC: Two halves of the same coin.]

[Guangdong]

An English historian once said, if he could choose when and where he’d like to be born, he’d choose Xinjiang, China during the 1^st Century, because Buddhism, Indian, Persian, Greek and Chinese culture came across each other then and there. Mr.s Curie wrote to her niece that, “You told me you wished to live in a century ago; another girl said she’d definitely prefer in the future. I think whatever age we live in, there’s a way to live meaningfully and interestingly.”

[BJC: Hands up: which of you wishes you could have been born a Uighur or Tibetan today?]

[Shandong]

A quote from Sun Yat-sen:

“My generation should take the reform and development of China as our responsibility. This faith should last till the end of the world. We shouldn’t be frustrated by failures or overcome by the difficulties. We should focus and step forward so as to catch up with the global progressing trend. Goodness shall accumulate and evilness shall eliminate and one day, we shall succeed.”

[BJC: Tread carefully on this one... could get awkward.]

[Jiangxi]

Don’t think about what you don’t have. Think about what you do have.

[BJC: No marks to the sassy asshole who wrote: “pollution, corruption, factional politics driven by undiluted self-interest, taxation without representation, massive wealth gap, non-independent judiciary, water shortages, state-controlled media, one-child policy, Internet censorship, unaffordable housing, human rights abuses, dependence on fossil fuels (coal), dwindling natural resources, ageing population, gender imbalance, maritime conflicts, export-dependent economy, low-interest rates, environmental degradation, ethnic tensions, lack of social security, expensive healthcare, rising student unemployment, best friend is North Korea.”]

[Hubei]

Various communications methods are being developed: email, SMS, etc. Do you think the letter is replaceable?

[BJC: This question presumably posted by letter from 1997.]

[Sichuan]

Talk about water.

[BJC: This question sponsored by Laoshan.]

[Anhui]

For several months, a sign was left on a ladder at a construction spot: “Notice: Ladder.” One day, a guy came and changed it to “Notice: put this somewhere else when it’s not in use.”

[BJC: China's development has reached the "smart-ass graffiti" stage."]

[Fujian]

A Chinese writer, Feng Jicai, wrote:

The race in the sports is about how much time you use to finish a certain length of journey. The race in life is the opposite: it’s about how long a journey you can cover within a certain length of time.

[BJC: Whoever can turn this into a pithy slogan for Li Ning gets a job in their marketing department.]

What constitutes a good answer is anyone’s guess. Although a few seem to ask for logic and thought, there seems to be some kind of “right” answer required – a magical alchemy of rote learning, garbled rhetoric and Party-line blather. Or a Global Times editorial.

If you have any ideas for what a correct answer should look like, leave them in the comments section – 10 marks each.

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 implanted themselves in my unconscious. I had a relatively easy time in school, considering I never fainted before a test, or felt the need to kill anything because of exam-related stress (Global Times: “Frogs in a pond near a residential compound in Qingdao, Shandong Province were poisoned recently by property management personnel to stop their croaking from interrupting students’ sleep, according to media reports”). Still, those nightmares…

All this is a long way of saying that I can’t imagine how gaokao — China’s national college entrance exam — will scar the psyches of this country’s youth. If I thought my nightmares were bad (though the relief from waking and realizing that I was in fact free from the bonds of institutional education was always a nice shot of euphoria for the morning), I can’t imagine the horrors today’s students will relive for the rest of their lives… especially if they, heavens forbid, fail to test up to expectations, their own or otherwise.

After the jump, pictures to commemorate the high school students of China, who are undergoing gaokao today and tomorrow. We’ll discuss this topic in-depth after the weekend. (Curated by Alicia, who supplied the captions.)

From study exhaustion

If I were the police, I'd be concerned for my safety too.

Will they look so happy after two days of testing?

Don't cheat. Seriously.

Never miss an opportunity to advertise – who knows, some of these kids taking the gaokao could be the future generation of Audi-driving cadres.

"I can sleep when I'm dead and/or done studying."

While parents eagerly wait for their children to emerge from the classrooms where the exams are happening...

…cops chat and drink water at the little booths set up for them.

While students, we can only hope, are doing this. Take it easy, guys and gals.

Sources: Sina (H/T Bo Li)

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 suggest — was quite different:

Path to stardom starts with an exam

In seven words, we come face-to-face with everything that’s wrong with China’s campaign of soft culture, its interpretation of what art is and its expectation for what art does: this country’s next generation of creative leaders are whittled down by an exam, and art is merely a vehicle for fame. Meanwhile, China’s largest English-language newspaper, writing a cover story for its USA and China editions, seems oblivious to the fact that something might be wrong with that.

Here’s China Daily’s lead:

To win an Oscar is to reach the pinnacle of the movie world.

As the glitterati hit the red carpet in Los Angeles for Hollywood’s 84th Academy Awards on Sunday, about 1 million wannabe stars in China will be preparing for another annual event that could help them emulate their heroes: art college entrance exams.

And what kind of questions are on this test?

A blogger recently reprinted what he or she said was a copy of a test paper for applicants to the Beijing Film Academy’s editing program. It included questions on PM2.5, which has been in the news due to environmental concerns, and asked what United States Vice-President Joe Biden had eaten when he visited Beijing last year.

Just so we’re clear, this means someone in charge of the admissions process at China’s top film academy believes one’s ability to edit film is correlated with his or her knowledge of current events. I think it’s completely admirable to want your students to be newshounds, but you do see the major problem here, right? By setting up an assessment with right/wrong answers — i.e. Biden ate at Yao Ji Stewed Liver, which is presumably the correct answer, even though “rice” or “his tongue” would be equally accurate — you will inevitably attract only students who are very good at taking your tests. And that creates even more problems.

Students applying for art colleges have to take multiple rounds of tests, but it’s important to note the major difference is applicants don’t have to score as high on the gaokao — the national college entrance exam that everyone takes. As a result, thousands of students are applying to art colleges simply because they’re easier to get into.

I give props to China Daily for broaching this subject. The dean of Beijing University of Technology’s art and design college estimated that “just 20 percent of students at the school are real art lovers.”

But it leaves me with a question for the estimable paper’s editors: possibly instead of propping up this system as a “path to stardom,” shouldn’t we be investigating ways of tearing it down? Shouldn’t we linger, at least one sentence, on what “stardom” means? Why remain so blissfully clueless on this subject, even after printing back-to-back paragraphs such as these:

A quick search on the Internet produces a list of schools offering training programs, with prices ranging from 10,000 to 60,000 yuan, depending on the number of hours and class sizes. Some even guarantee in advertisements that, after completing their course, students will be able to pass an exam set by top film academies.

As the average student applies to about 10 art colleges across China, the biggest drawback about the warm-up training and the exams is not the expense but the long distances students and their families need to travel.

Oh. The biggest drawback isn’t paying up to 60,000 yuan for pure bunkum (“guarantee in advertisements that… students will be able to pass an exam”… what grade of horseshit is required to set off a reporter’s alarm?). No, the biggest drawback is how far away these cram schools are.

Tian Lin, a senior at Beijing University of Technology’s art and design college, said she moved from her hometown in Central China’s Hunan province to the capital in October 2007, giving herself five months to prepare for the entrance examination.

Oh. Beijing is far away from Hunan province.

Isn’t the problem here that students like Tian Lin think it’s necessary to travel from Hunan to Beijing to take entrance exam prep courses? Maybe I’m being a dick for expecting too much out of Chinese journalism, but shouldn’t Tian Lin’s story be the lead and not some throwaway line about the fucking Oscars?

The final section of China Daily’s cover story discusses the difficulties artists face when entering the real world.

Jiang Nan knows firsthand what life is like for a struggling artist.

After finishing her studies in vocals and music performance at the China Opera House in 2002 she discovered that a dream can quickly become a nightmare.

“I’d dreamed of being a singer since I was little, but after I enrolled at college I found the business is very different from my imagination,” she told China Daily, adding: “Some things are just out of your control.”

…

“I decided to quit singing and become a salesperson for a decoration company in Beijing, largely due to financial reasons.

It seems, then, that “stardom” is a purely mythical construct created by dream peddlers and exploited by people who run training programs that charge 10,000 to 60,000 yuan, not so much a destination as a process that requires years, possibly even decades, of work. I’m reminded of this excellent, purely practical piece of advice from National Public Radio’s Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

And I’m reminded of what Lola B had to say about this, a full hour before China Daily bumbled its way toward almost making a point:

Here in China, with the market still booming and students able to put up a “show of their very own” in any old abandoned space, the dream is still alive. I just don’t want to be the one to tell them that in a few short years, art schools will become oversaturated, collectors will be wiser, and the competition will be cutthroat. And then it’ll be those creative wunderkinds who can create dreamscapes for the real world who will be rewarded.