China’s gaokao champions would rather have the cash

The elite emerging from the world’s scariest exams no longer wants to “Serve the People”.

In China, the race for university admission shows no sign of slowing . Every year, millions of Chinese students prepare to face the trial of a lifetime: the decisive National College Entrance Exam, known as the Gaokao, which in Mandarin means the ‘great exam’, believed by some to be the most stressful and feared in the world.

The gaokao is as ancient as Imperial China. The candidates about to sit the national exam on which their university future depends, are known as zhangyuan, the same term used during imperial times for candidates who achieved the best results in the exam that entitled them to admission to the celestial bureaucracy.

In June, like every June, the gaokao was virtually the only topic of discussion in China. During the ‘three days’ of the national exam the cities grind to a halt and it’s as if space and time stood still; even the traffic moves aside to let the parents accompany their children to their fate.

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