China’s ‘epidemic generation’ sits high-stakes entrance exam

BEIJING: High school seniors across China lined up yesterday to sit the gruelling gaokao college entrance exam under the shadow of Covid-19.

The class of 2022 are the first to have had all three years of China’s high school curriculum disrupted by the pandemic, bouncing between online and offline classes and adapting to frequent Covid tests and sudden closures.

The constant uncertainty has compounded the intense stress of the three-day gaokao, which can determine a teenager’s life path in China’s highly competitive academic and job environment.

“These kids haven’t had it easy,” Jin Lijuan, mother of a candidate, said outside a high school here.

Anxious parents offered words of encouragement to their children and took photos outside the school as students shuffled through its gates, some cramming last-minute.

Police officers guided traffic around the campus. Signs near the school asked drivers not to honk.

Yesterday was the first time in weeks that many students had seen their classmates, as the Chinese capital had closed schools and offices to try and eliminate a coronavirus outbreak.

“At the beginning, my kid was very happy since there’s no need to go to school,” said Zhao Dong, whose daughter is sitting the gaokao this year.

“But as time went by, looking at her computer for a whole day of class became quite difficult.”

A record 11.93 million people registered for this year’s gaokao, state news agency Xinhua said, with teens in some locked-down neighbourhoods taking the tests in individual hotel rooms.

“This generation of kids entered high school in 2019... so the entire second semester of their first year was done at home,” Zhao said.

“They are like an ‘epidemic generation’.”