College entrance exam begins across city
Yang Meiping, Chen Huizhi and Song Yiyang
About 50,000 students in Shanghai sat for the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam, yesterday at 104 schools around the city. Luckily, the exams weren’t dampened by downpours which caused flooding and heavy traffic in Shanghai on Monday.
This is the first time Chinese students have sat the exam in July since 2003. The exam is usually scheduled for June, but the change was made due to the COVID-19 pandemic which kept students at home to take online classes for more than two months.
Also due to the pandemic, every student has to show an ID card and an exam attendance ticket, as well as a health declaration letter. They need to have their temperatures checked, too, before entering exam sites.
Students must wear masks when entering exam locations, but can take them off during the test.
To handle emergencies such as students developing fever, every exam site has prepared extra classrooms to let feverish students take their tests separately. Each district has a school on standby in case any original exam site has to be closed.
The first part of the exam, a written Chinese test, started at 9am. Students were advised to arrive at test sites 45 minutes earlier to go through temperature and ID checks before entering the testing rooms.
At Xinzhuang High School in Minhang District, parents and students arrived before 7:30am. Some students gathered together in front of the school and reviewed knowledge points that might appear in the test.
“I’m not nervous at all. I’ve had so many tests and this is just another one,” said Yang Jieyu, a student at the Middle School
Affiliated to Shanghai Minhang Institute of Education.
“I just follow my daily routines. I went to bed at 11pm last night and got up at 6:15am this morning,” she said. “My parents dropped me here and left immediately. I told them not to wait outside the school throughout the test. It’s useless.”
A mother surnamed Lu and her husband remained near the school after dropping off their son.
“He is obviously nervous,” she said. “He refused to talk with us in the morning and we dared not speak either. I think I’m more nervous than him.”
Li Jue and her husband also drove their son to the school early.
“We left home before 7am, as
I was worried it would become rainy and cause heavy traffic congestion,” Li said. “We arrived early so my son had a final review in the car for about half an hour. He entered the school at around 8am.”
Li said the family had rented an apartment near the school after her son was admitted into Xinzhuang High School three years ago, while their home is in Xuhui District.
“The lease contract expired in June as the exam would have finished last month if the pandemic had not happened,” she said.
Both she and her husband requested leave from work for three days to accompany their son during the exam days.
“We are not that nervous because the school has been arranging study schedules well,” she said. “They started online classes in February and resumed campus classes in late April. Of course, online teaching may not be as effective, but it’s fair for everybody and they had an extra month for review.”
Li said she also searched online for things that are believed to bring luck to test-takers.
Li explained that his son knocked a zongzi, glutinous rice dumpling, hung over his head in the morning for the propitious implication of being the first in the exam. He wore Nike shoes as the iconic logo looks likes a check to mark correct answers.
Li and her husband wore auspicious clothing of their own: her a qipao and him a blue Tshirt, both believed to bring good luck. She also told her son to kiss the test paper for good omens.
“Such things are auspicious and can also make us all relaxed,” said Li.
At Shanghai Jincai High School, many students arrived with their parents before 8am.
Faculty of No. 2 High School of East China Normal University unfolded a banner to cheer for their students.
Teachers from Shanghai Experimental School made two lines to await their students to pass and give them encouragement.
A mother in a qipao surnamed Tang watched as her daughter entered the gate.