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About 9 million Chinese students - and their anxious parents - endured arguably the biggest test of their lives in the past three days: the gaokao, or national college entrance exam. As a father with a son at university, do you remember the experience?
Even for those of us who don't have to take the exam and don't have test-takers in our homes, we can feel the intensity, especially from the tightened rules to ensure students get peace and quietness before and during the exam; construction sites suspend work, traffic police patrol roads. I'm not so sure the nervous air has a positive effect, though. Parents need to ease the pressure on their children. Although the exam is important, going to a good university is not the only path our children can take. Youngsters today have far more choices, and we should let them know that. I remember my son the night before the exam years ago. He played computer games. I didn't interfere, but I did get him go to bed on time. I didn't want him to have a stressful nightmare before the exam had even started. I understand parents are anxious about their child's future - that's why Beijing taxi drivers are quick to help test-takers out when they can. You often find cabbies rushing students and parents to school for free so they aren't late for the exam. I do it too. Although they're usually very nervous, I try to put the students at ease by giving them two thumbs up when I drop them off.
Duanwu Jie, or Dragon Boat Festival, passed on Monday. People are afraid the ancient festival is losing its traditions and becoming simply a day for people to eat zongzi (rice parcels). How do you see it?
For me, as I have to work during festivals, I just went home early that day to eat zongzi with my wife and son. Nowadays you can buy zongzi anytime, anywhere. I remembered when I was a kid it was only once a year that we ate zongzi. You could smell them as soon as you arrived in the hutong, and it was so hard not to just run back home and eat them. Now, it's not the same. Among the lunar calendar holidays, Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival are still the most treasured, as they are the days reminding people of family reunions. What is good about Dragon Boat Festival today is that it's a public holiday, which means people have more time to spend with family.
Want the inside track from METRO's talkative taxi driver Dou Keying? E-mail your questions to metrobeijing@chinadaily.com.cn.
(China Daily 06/09/2011)
