gaokao

The national college entrance examination, or "gaokao" in Chinese, will last for two days for students in 26 provinces, and three or four days in Shanghai, Shandong, Guangdong, Hainan and Jiangsu.This year marks the 30th anniversary of the restoration of the national college entrance examination. Chinese universities stopped enrolling students from 1966 to 1976, due to the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.Over the past three decades, almost 60 million Chinese have taken part in gaokao, with 10 million enrolled at universities.During the decade of the Cultural Revolution, many young Chinese lost the chance to study. When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping reinstated the gaokao in 1977, about 5.7 million Chinese competed for the 270,000 university places that year.Chinese people describe gaokao as "thousands of troops on a single-log bridge" because of the low enrollment rate. For students in poverty-stricken rural areas, the tough exam is their only opportunity to escape the rigors of country life. China is in the grips of summer "gaokao" madness. Success in the gaokao can change a candidate's life in this fiercely competitive society.The Ministry of Education said earlier that a record 10.1 million people had applied to take the exam this year, but only 5.67 million would be able to enter college.A new monitoring system was launched on Thursday to ensure the exam runs smoothly and prevent cheating. All exam venues in more than 15 provinces and regions can be monitored and viewed via a huge screen