Yunnan Part 2!

Sorry for the delay!

I left you with my village friend Lily waving me off. From there SYA drove for what seemed like years through the treacherous and narrow strips of road winding through the rice patties. Lots of dramamine and bathroom breaks later, we made it to the next village. There we interacted with the locals and rose in the morning to a lively market filled with anything you could think of. We set off from the market and hiked into the next village to follow a similar routine. It was incredible, but to be honest I remember those few days as a blur of villagers faces, roosters and cows calling out to wake us int he early morning, and markets. Lots of markets. We also hiked through some absolutely stunning rice patties. The blinding sun glinted off of the shallow murky pools of rice seedlings as the 50 of us tottered on narrow paths, careful not to fall and destroy the farmers precious livelihood. On one particular hike we watched the colors of the sky change from daytime to sunset not by looking up at the sky but by looking at our feet in the patties around us.
After our days in the rice patties and villages, we entered the final, and most memorable, leg of our trip. The 50 of us arrived in JingHong, the capital of a very tropical part of Yunnan called Xishuangbanna. Jinghong is not a big city, but it is full of energy and people in constant swirls of motion. We spent most of the day time attending class with high school kids from the town and making friends. There are many conversations and stories with my JingHong friends, but I think the best way to give you a glimpse into there lives is to post a history essay I wrote about my time there. We were assigned a 7 pg research and travel paper for our Yunnan trip and I decided to focus on the students from JingHong and their preparation for the Gaokao. The Gaokao is the Chinese equivalent of the SAT and it has quite a bit of controversy surrounding it. The whole concept is explained better in the essay but its a bit long so I apologize.
Hope you enjoy!

Gao Kao, A Test With Lot of Questions to Answer For

The two Chinese girls hesitantly touched the forks and knives, giggling nervously. The girl to the right, Wang Yu (王玉), clutched her fork like a spear and bravely stuck it into the leafy sea of a greek salad. With everyone watching, she delicately placed it in her mouth and chewed. “How is it?” I asked. Wang Yu answered, “Really delicious!,” politely, but didn’t touch the salad again the whole night.
Several of my SYA classmates and I had invited our new friends from Yunnan’s Jing Hong Number 11 Public High School to come with us to have dinner so they could try western food for the first time. The two girls sat across from us, looking rather uncomfortable in their own home town, and picked skittishly at the pizza, pasta, salad, and ice cream we had ordered to try to give them as an introduction to American style pigging out. As they put miniscule bites into their mouths to try and please us, we started talking about school. They hesitantly answered questions about their favorite teachers, subjects, and classmates, but getting them to talk and feel comfortable with us was like pulling teeth. Then I brought up a subject that I hoped would spark some conversation. I asked them what they thought about the time consuming, fiercely competitive burden that all Chinese high schoolers must face when getting ready for life after high school. Looks that one might see on the face of a torture victim during a particularly brutal beating crossed both of their faces and they groaned. I asked them what they thought about the Gao Kao (高考).
The Gao Kao is the Chinese standardized college entrance exam for all people looking to attend college. Every year in June, roughly 9 million people sit this test for 3 rigorous days trying to remember every speck of information they ever were taught in high school. Before finding out their scores, test takers have to blindly write down the colleges they wish to attend and hope their scores qualify them. The test consists of the three mandatory subjects, Chinese literature, Mathematics and the choice of a foreign language between English, Japanese, and French though English is most commonly chosen. From there, students either take three science based tests or three humanities based tests. This split is determined by the choice all high school students take in their 2nd year of high school to become a li ke (理科), math and science focused, or a wen ke (文科), humanities focused, student. The two girls we were having dinner with that night were both wen ke students in their second year of high school. As wen ke students, along with the 3 mandatory subjects, they would also have to take history, geography, and politics tests. Li ke students, in contrast, would have to take physics, chemistry and biology tests. 1
As soon as I asked the question about how they felt about the Gao Kao the girls, so quiet just moments before, began to chatter animatedly. Even with over a year to go before the test, said that all their free time was taken up studying and preparing. In school the Gao Kao and its importance is shoved down their throats, and when they get home their parents tell them how important the test is and shove it down their throats even more. In contrast with the American college entrance exam equivalent, the SAT, for which almost all preparation is done at home with little connection to high school classes, in China, high school education is directly aimed at prepping students to get high scores on the Gao Kao. When I asked one of our new friends when they started preparing for the Gao Kao, she laughed and said she has basically been preparing since she could remember. At a young age, the importance of getting high grades was stressed so she could get into a good middle school. Then, most of middle school was spent prepping to take the high school entrance exam to try to get into a good high school, which could lead to superior teachers and preparation to get a higher Gao Kao score.
After hearing all of this, I was a little bit confused. Why all this pressure and preparation for a test? Of course as a high school student getting ready to apply to college myself, I understood the pressure of getting into college, but the amount of pressure and preparation the students spent obsessing over this test, lost me. With the SAT and other American college entrance exam equivalents, a students ability to get into college is directly affected by a students exam scores, but that does not mean a low test score will mean no chance at attending a good college. In the US, colleges look at grades from high school years, activities and passions the student has been involved in, teacher recommendations, and essays written by the students. Colleges look at SAT scores, and they are important, but generally not the determining factor for whether a student is accepted or not. When I tried to explain this to our Chinese friends and asked why the test was so important in China, they explained to me the reason the Gao Kao ruled the lives of almost all adolescents.
In China, as afore mentioned, to apply to colleges student write down the colleges they want to go to before finding out their scores. The college receives the scores of the student and accepts or rejects them based on the score. There is no essay, interview, or recommendation. It is the score and the score alone that matters. Student wait their entire academic careers to take the test, and either they get into a college they wrote down on the list, or they don’t and they either have to retake the test the following year or start working straight out of high school.
After hearing that college acceptance was based entirely on 3 days of testing in June, I asked Wang Yu if she was nervous to take it. Wang Yu looked down at her plate of uneaten french fries and sighed. She told me, of course she was nervous. This test determined what college she would get into and from that what kind of job she would get. The test would essentially determine what her career path would be, how much she would be paid and how her life would be. However, she told me as she braved a small smile, she knew she was being prepared as best as was possible and being nervous didn’t help anything.
The dark interior of the internet cafe was quiet aside from the chattering sound of clicking keys. The boy I was standing behind watching over his shoulder as he blew up a strange purple alien on the screen, let out a grunt of accomplishment as he ascended to the next level. I had asked my new friend Zhang Jun (张竣) to take me to his favorite place in Jing Hong and thus ended up about 2 blocks from the school at a seedy little internet cafe. After watching him blow up 4 more aliens and move on to the 5 level, he was shot down, and a game over sign lit up the screen. Dejected, Zhang Jun consented when I suggested we go to the fruit drink place next door to talk. He sat across from me, moodily stirring his strawberry slushy while I tried to get him to talk about his family and school. After several futile minutes, I used the same tactic I had with my two Chinese friends the night before. I asked him how he felt about the Gao Kao. Zhang Jun looked up from his drink and smiled. He told me that there wasn’t anything to think about the Gao Kao, it is a Chinese xiguan (习惯) or custom, and whatever problems it might have, it isn’t going anywhere soon.
In fact what Zhang Jun said does hold truth. Ever since around 200 BC2, Chinese has had the history of standardized examinations to determine work and rank in society. For about 2000 years, China used the Civil Service Exam and though each dynasty put its own spin on the exam, the basic test remained the same. Similar to the Gao Kao, test takers who had been prepped virtually since birth would sit the test for several days, and instead of trying to get into colleges, these test takers tried to qualify to become the intellectual elite that ruled the country. While the Civil Service Exam and the Gao Kao are different in name with one deciding a possible government position and one deciding college acceptance, the basic idea is the same. Both tests essentially decide what kind of life the test taker will lead. Civil Service Examines who did well on the test would rise to become the gentry and upper class of society. Those who passed became the citizens with high paying jobs and comfortable lives, and they could easily support their families. However, those who did not do well had little future ahead of them and often had to go back to working in the countryside or doing low paying jobs in cities. With the Gao Kao, much is the same. Those students who take the test and ace it, get into the country’s best Universities and have the opportunity to become the countries elite. However, for those who do not test well and do not come from families with money that can help support them, it is often back to the countryside or to their small towns to work in low paying jobs. Moreover, for both of these tests, family pressure to do well is a huge incentive to get high scores on both tests. With the Civil Service Exam, families would prep their children virtually from the time they were born to do well on the exams. When a child did well on the exams, it meant that he would rise to a high position with a high salary and easily be able to take care of his parents. Ever since 1979 and the implementation of the 1-child policy, this phenomenon of parental pressure has intensified. Now parents in the countryside with no really stability to fall back on when they retire, are completely reliant on their child to support them. With only one child with the potential to take care of them in the future, parents unload huge amount of pressure on their children to ace the test.
After hearing some of this from Zhang Jun, I asked him if he felt pressure from his parents. Luckily for Zhang Jun, because he is from a small village, the Chinese government allowed his family to have two children so he has one older sister already in college which takes some of the pressure off. However, he told me that some of his classmates are not so fortunate. He said that some of his peers parents do anything they can to boost their child’s Gao Kao grade whether it is biking them to school to save them energy they can use to study, or making sure that have absolutely no chores to do to interfere with their studies. The idea of a ride to school and no chores may seem appealing, but in reality it is nothing more than a completely controlled life with no freedom and parents doing all but breathe for their children. Zhang Jun said that he worries that while his classmates might get excellent scores on the Gao Kao, they have never had to so much as open a box of cereal themselves and perhaps will not be able to take care of themselves once into their top choice universities.
Furthermore, Zhang Jun said that he sometimes does not agree with what his teacher teaches him or has a differing opinion of politics, but because all learning is for the Gao Kao, his opinion does not matter. The path to a high Gao Kao score is narrow and those who stray from the path do not succeed. This could also create problems for China in the future. While they might be creating a country that can perfectly solve the most complicated calculus or identify an independent clause’s positioning in a foreign language, the Gao Kao puts almost no emphasis on creativity or individual thinking. This rote learning snuffing out imagination, and the intensive pressure on students that sometimes debilitates them in the future is a commonly acknowledged fact by Chinese people, Zhang Jun told me. Many people, some of his teachers included, think that something has to be done. However, he does not believe the test will change any time soon. “The Chinese people care about one thing above all.” Zhang Jun said in chinese and paused to pick up his cup and dump the rest of its pink contents down his throat. “It has to be fair. The Gao Kao has problems, but it’s the only way to keep it fair.”
After the Communist Party came to power in 1949, provinces and territories began to hold college entrance education. However, in 1966 with the start of the Cultural Revolution, all colleges were closed and examinations were halted. Although some colleges were reopened during the first years of the 1970’s, it was not until 1977, under the command of Deng Xiao Ping, that examinations restarted. From there, the Gao Kao of today was born.3 Because of the Cultural Revolution, millions of people lost their chance for higher education. Deng Xiao Ping created the Gao Kao as a fair way to measure national talent and to give those who missed their opportunity to go to college another chance. People all across China were given the same test, on the same day, with a completely equal playing field. This concept of equality and fairness is what continues to attract the Chinese people to the Gao Kao. However, today some students and parents are questioning how fair the Gao Kao really is.
Li Xiao Mei’s (李晓梅) thoughtful eyes flashed with unexpected anger from behind their pink rims. Her small, tanned hands gripped the chopsticks she was holding with a fiery vengeance. “Bu gong ping!” (不公平!) She declared that it wasn’t fair like a preacher trying to make a convert of me. I had just asked Li Xiao Mei what she thought of the Gao Kao and had gotten an explosive reaction. At first I could not understand her reaction. Why was she calling a test renowned and praised for being one of the most egalitarian tests available today not fair? However, after she calmed down for a moment, Li Xiao Mei explained to me her reasoning for finding the Gao Kao unfair. 30 minutes of intense conversation later, even my blood began to boil at the completely apparent unfair advantages available to some students.
Li Xiao Mei started by saying that it is her dream to go to Beijing University, the most elite university in China. She has dreams of leaving her little village town in Yunnan to see the thriving city of Beijing and being taught law by China’s brightest professors. She said that if she was a Beijing native, her current practice scores indicate that she would do well enough on the real test to attend Beijing University。 However, because she is from Yunnan her scores would have to be up to 70 or 80 points higher to be anywhere within the acceptance range.
This rule is true of all provinces. A student applying to a college outside of his or her own province must achieve a significantly higher score than if that student lived in the province the college was located. Colleges all have requirements to fill a certain number of accepted spots for residents of the province and this gives residents of that province a distinct advantage. This means that students from provinces without famous or high tier colleges have to work much harder to score high enough to get into a college that will bring them good work in the future. This rule seems to directly take away from the ‘fairness’ the Gao Kao is praised for. How is it fair that a student from an affluent family living in Shanghai has a better chance that a student from poor family in a small village in Anhui to get into a top tier school like Tsinghua University? This practice of changing score ranges for the local province seems to give a noticeable advantage to those living in provinces with big cities. In China, the best colleges are primarily based in Shanghai and Beijing. While there are colleges in all of the provinces, and many of them good, no other province has colleges up to Shanghai and Beijing’s standard. This means that being born into a family in Beijing or Shanghai automatically gives a student the upper hand in getting into a good school.
This is not the only discrepancy that calls into question the fairness of the Gao Kao. Li Xiao Mei explained to me that many of her classmates also have a unique advantage. Her school is located in Yunnan province, the most culturally diverse province in China. Half of her friends are Dai or Hanni ethinic minorities and because of their minority status, they are awarded an extra 20 points to their Gao Kao scores. The Gao Kao gives out many such concession points. Whether to ethnic minorities or to people with family origins in Taiwan, many different groups of people receive these 20 extra points which is a huge edge over the rest of their competition. These extra points many seem perfectly fair to those who benefit from them, but to students like Li Xiao Mei they are just another reason to sneer at the unfairness of the system which is their only way to a successful future.
While these issues may seem to take away from the legitimacy of the test, the progress that the test has created in educating China’s population cannot be ignored. In 1977, the first year college entrance examinations restarted, roughly 4% or test takers enrolled in college. Today test taker’s enrollment rates are up to 57%, a huge distance to come in just over 30 years. This test, while considered by some to be unfair, overly concerned with rote learning with little emphasis creativity, and an incredible stress creator for students, has put the Chinese people into college in a reasonably orderly way. Although faulty and in need of serious revision, the Gao Kao helps almost 10 million students every year go to college.4 Wang Yu and Zhang Jun both found issue with different aspects of the test, but they admitted, the Gao Kao is the only system China has right now that works and they would just have to do their best to ace it.
Li Xiao Mei looked at me dead in the eye once more. “It just isn’t fair. THe whole system needs to be fixed, but no one knows how to. I hate it!” She said in her heavily accented Chinese with a volume that wasn’t entirely appropriate for the small restaurant we were sitting in. Her chopsticks quivered in her trembling hand. Then suddenly she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “But saying I hate it won’t make it go away. Complaining doesn’t make it any less real. We just have to work hard until June and get through it. I just hope that all this work for one test is worth it in the end. ”


Until Next Time!
Julia

Song of the Week: Situations by Jack Johnson