Read and Enjoy

This is an essay I wrote for history about my trip to Yunnan a month ago. We were supposed to pick a focus, and write a travel essay about it. I'm not going to post the sources, because there are way too many, but I do have them.

7:30 AM on a dark Monday morning. The sun is still rising, not even letting us, 51 American students in the middle of Jinghong, get a clear view of the Chinese high school we are about to attend. The cold of the morning touches every bit of my body not covered, and sets to work trying to freeze my still damp hair. Our teacher (马老师) calls out students names in groups of 4-9 and corresponding classroom number, points to the general direction our classroom is in, and sends us on our way, free into the madness of a Chinese high school. Once my group arrives in classroom 130, most of the 12th grade Chinese students are already there, studying for their next class. (Their classes start at 8 in the morning, and sometimes don’t end until 9:45 at night.) There is an awkward, pregnant pause as we enter, 9 foreign faces amongst 16 Chinese ones. There is only 10 minutes to scope out the “other side”: their clothes, their mannerisms, and their speech. It is awkward, watching everyone else, and what they are doing, and seeing who has the courage to make contact first: the Chinese in their matching blue, white and red uniforms, or us, 9 half asleep Americans. Then it is time to stand up, greet the Physics teacher, and begin the first class of the day in Jinghong #1 City High School.

We were in a 理科 (science oriented) class, as opposed to a 文科 (humanities/liberal arts oriented.) The science track takes Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Math, Chinese and English class, while the humanities class takes Chinese, English, Politics, History, Geography and Math (both tracks require Chinese, English and Math). As soon as students start their high school education, they have to pick which track (science or liberal arts) to study, but they do not necessarily have to follow that same track once in college. Generally, there are more boys in the sciences track, and more girls in the humanities and liberal arts track, and this is definitely true in Jinghong.

Jinghong #1 City High-School (or 景洪市一中 in Mandarin) is the 3rd best high school in Jinghong, a city in the extreme Southern corner of Yunnan, the province in China’s extreme Southwest corner (so overall, this is the “deep South”). Yunnan is a diverse place, with at least 25 out of 55 Chinese ethnic minorities living inside its borders . Yunnan’s total population is approximately 42.88 million , with an ethnic population of over 14.33 million (about 34%). Its temperate, tropical climate (described as 4 seasons of Spring) makes it the perfect place to grow tobacco, sugar cane, and tea, which are an important part of Yunnan’s economy. Indeed, it is in the county of Xishuangbanna (西双版纳)-in the southern most corner of Yunnan- that the famous Puer tea is grown, harvested, and sold wholesale.

Jinghong, known as the political, economic and cultural center of the Xishuangbanna prefecture, is the home to 10-13 ethnic minorities , and approximately 380,000 people . It borders the West bank of the Mekong River, just north of Myanmar and Laos. A very laid back place, Jinghong’s streets are lined with palm trees and plants, and it seems like every side walk in the whole city is under construction, by workers who are either taking a smoke break, or asleep by their wheel barrows. Down every street and alley way, there is a Thai man screaming at you to come look at his “real” jade bracelets, or someone inviting you into their shop to look at wood carvings of elephants and dragons.

While this is all new and strange for a foreigner living in China (especially one who lives in Beijing, Jinghong’s polar opposite) it is home (and therefore normal) for the school kids here, and they are quite unlike any other Chinese kids I have ever met (at least, the ones I have met in Beijing). Most of the high school kids we are with in Beijing are very school/study oriented, and have almost no time for anything else. Here in Jinghong, the opposite is true; this isn’t to say that kids in Jinghong don’t study or value school, but in Jinghong, they have a much more relaxed attitude about the Gaokao, which is the high school exit exam and College entrance exam. Most of them have accepted that they will not score high enough on the Gaokao to go to a really competitive school (such as Beida or Qinghua), so they use their time to enjoy their beautiful city.

The Gaokao (高考 in Chinese) is often likened to the SAT, but only because both tests are both required for college applications. That is about where the similarities end. As one journalist put it “ {The Gaokao is} China’s SAT, if the SAT lasted two days, covered everything you’d ever studied, and decided your future.” It’s an examination aimed at testing how much you can remember, and how well you test. When taking the Gaokao, every student is required to take a foreign language – normally English - (no speaking, just listening and writing), Chinese, and math. Students can then pick up to 3 other tests (at least one is required) to take, depending on what they feel strongest in. In China, every school kid begins to prepare for this test in the beginning of his or her high school career (although you could go as far as to say they start in junior high, as that is the basis for much of the information kids are tested on). Every school’s curriculum is aimed at preparing their students to take the Gaokao. Parents in the country side will send their children to better schools in a city for junior high and high school education, so that they will test better on the Gaokao.

罗优莎, or Rosa as she told me to call her, is one of these children. Her family is originally from a small Lahu ethnic minority village about 6 hours out of Jinghong, and her parents are still there (she has no siblings). She lives with her aunt (her dad’s older sister) an easy 2-kilometer walk from her school. Every day during the lunch break, she would walk home, eat lunch, take a nap, and then walk back to school to start class. A girl of about 5’7”, with a round face always ready with a smile, she was happy to talk to me, the foreigner who could barely manage tones in Chinese. She answered every one of my monotonous and boring questions as honestly as she could, especially the ones regarding the dreaded Gaokao (which students can only take once a year, adding to the already intense pressure.) When asked about her initial views of the Gaokao, she immediately said that it was fair and just. This was the exact opposite of the response I expected to get from her, as the Gaokao is extremely tough, and is biased towards certain students in special situations.

The Gaokao’s intensity has roots stretching far back into the past. Many scholars assert that the Gaokao is the modern version of the Chinese Civil Service Exam, which was in place for thousands of years (although it ended in 1905 just before the overthrow of the Qing dynasty.) The Civil Service Exam was a test that people had to pass to become a scholar or part of China’s gentry. It was based on Confucian teachings and values, requiring at least 10 years of study, and forced memorization of many Confucian classics, and long-winded poems (which would later have to be referenced in the test.) The score on the Civil Service Exam also determined what job in government a person would receive, as the test was a test of how well a person could govern. But it was not easy to do well on these exams. In fact, during the Tang Dynasty, the pass rate was only 2%. Candidates would be locked into an examination room with a bed, a desk, a chair, and the test, and not let out until they were done (which sometimes was not for 2 or 3 days.) This drove many of the candidates to death and insanity.

Although the Gaokao is obviously a big change from the Civil Service Exam, there are still many elements that were left over from the Civil Service Exam that the Gaokao still has. For example, the Gaokao is still a test based on memorization: the memorization of everything a student has learned since the beginning of high school (instead of Confucian classics.) Hence much of what is learned in high school is aimed at teaching students just for the test, not to prepare them for the real world. It is a major test at the end of the year, lasting for 3 days, all day long. Even the purpose is still the same: the score you get on the Gaokao determines what college you get into, just like how the score on the Civil Service Exam determined what sort of job a person would get in government.

Yet unlike the Civil Service Exam, many of the strategies implemented in trying to make the Gaokao unbiased in fact accomplish the exact opposite. For example, if the student taking it belongs to an ethnic minority (and they indicate that on the test) they automatically get 100 points added to their test (each test is graded out of 900 points ). This is in an effort to bridge the gap between minority and majority ethnic groups. But to Han people, who don’t get extra points, this is seen as unfair. There is also another, less advertised bias. If the student taking the Gaokao lives in Beijing (for example) and applies to Beijing University, then their required score to get into that university (one of the best in China) is far less (almost 100 points less) then it would be if a student from Yunnan, for example, applied to the same school. This is simply because that student from Beijing already lives in Beijing, and wants to go to college there. The flipside would also be true for a Yunnan and Beijing student applying to school in Yunnan (the student from Yunnan would be given preference –therefore a lower required score.)

I asked Rosa, my friend from Jinghong, why, considering all these things, she still thought the Gaokao was fair. The only answer I got from her was that in the end, it tested how well a student could test, and how much material that student could memorize (which she believed directly correlates to how smart a person is, and indeed is the main point of the Gaokao.)

Still confused, I turned to her classmate 刘茜 (Liu Qian), who quickly became my best friend. Liu Qian was a Dai ethnic minority student, living in Jinghong with her parents. Because her favorite class is math, she chose the science track in school, and excelled. Telling me that she wants to move to Chongqing and become a doctor, she’s nervous for the Gaokao, and anxious to get a good score. It didn’t help that she didn’t think she would do well, and was not ignorant of the fact that if she wanted to go to a good school, she would have to score much better then students receiving a better education than her (like students in Beijing, or Shanghai). She too believes that the Gaokao is a fair, and an impersonal judge of a person’s ability to succeed. She said she didn’t necessarily want to score high enough to go to school in Beijing, she just wanted to be able to go to her #1 school, which was in Chong Qing. They way she said it made it seem like this was her back up school, because she knew she couldn’t test well enough to get into a Beijing university.

As the day (and our trip) wound to an end in the tropical city of Jinghong, I realized just how much the Gaokao was a part of Chinese high schools students’ lives. Every night, when I went with my friends, they would always say that they could have fun, but later, they would be going home to study. Amidst the palm trees and jade shops was a struggle by students to further themselves in life, and to beat the system of tests that they are bound to. And as I walked out of the paved, palm tree lined way of the school, I couldn’t help but be thankful that the dreaded Gaokao would never be part of my life.

As a side note, I only got a B+ on this essay. 不好意思 I thought I did better then that. :(