 Over 120,000 take college entrance exams in Sichuan, Gansu
By Huang Zhiling in Chengdu (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-04 07:39 More than 120,000 high school students in the quake-hit zones of Sichuan and Gansu provinces took the national college entrance examination yesterday, almost a month after examinees in the rest of the country sat for it. In Sichuan, 96,421 students from 40 cities, districts and counties in Chengdu, Deyang, Mianyang, Guangyuan, Ya'an, as well as in the Aba Tibet and Qiang autonomous prefecture, started taking the three-day examination in 77 test centers. About 82,000 students are sitting for the exam in prefabricated rooms set up in playgrounds, squares and other open spaces, said Liu Min, deputy chief of the Sichuan educational test institute. To prevent heatstroke, all the prefabricated rooms in Mianyang have been equipped with air-conditioners. Electric fans are also available in the rooms in Guangyuan, the northernmost city of Sichuan bordering Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. "Other than ceiling fans, each prefabricated room in Deyang has blocks of ice to keep the place cool," Liu told China Daily. The rest of the students in Sichuan are taking the exam in classrooms designed to withstand aftershocks. The prefabricated rooms are also strong enough to withstand 8-magnitude quakes. "All students have taken part in emergency drills in case a major aftershock occurs," he said. In Chongqing High School, the largest test center in Chongzhou, a city under the administration of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, all items usually hung on walls including fireproof equipment and decorative frames have been removed for fear of hitting students in an aftershock. In the Aba region, where roads have often been blocked by landslides, four helicopters from the Chengdu Military Area Command flew in more than 4,000 exam papers last Friday. Local police and college admission office staff escorted the transportation of the papers. "It is the first time employees from the security bureau have guarded the examination papers day and night," Liu said. Exam papers were transported to the other quake-hit zones by road, he said. In Anxian county of Mianyang, 2,000 students took the exam in a hall converted from a pharmaceutical factory workshop. "It might well be the largest exam hall in Chinese history," said Yu Sanxia, an 18-year-old student from Anxian High School taking the exams at the site. Gansu province also arranged for 24,000 students from 17 counties to take the exams. Most of the 810 test centers are using prefabricated rooms. In the city of Longnan, 676 prefabricated rooms have been built for 19,915 candidates. Electric fans and anti-heatstroke measures have also been provided in each room. In mountainous Wudu district, southeast of Gansu bordering Sichuan, two off-road vehicles have been prepared for three exam centers. The vehicles are on standby to pick up candidates if the students come up against landslides on their way to the exam centers. The government has also given additional benefits to quake-hit exam candidates. The China Education Development Foundation has given each examinee a daily food subsidy of 10 yuan ($1.50) during the three-day exam, the Ministry of Health said on its website. The Education Ministry has also required all Chinese universities to modify their enrolment by increasing the number of places for Sichuan students by 2 percent. (China Daily 07/04/2008 page7) |
