Testing times

In 2007, a record 10.1 million Chinese applied to take the national college entrance examination (gaokao) and most won places. It was a far cry from 1977, when just 4.7 percent of applicants, widely regarded in China as the best of their era, won admission to university, among them the filmmakers Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.

Even today, taking gaokao is a critical moment in a student's life and success in it can change a youngster's life in this fiercely competitive society. Back in the fall of 1977, village authorities announced that China would hold its first nationwide university entrance examination since 1965. It was open to anyone aged 13-37 and for a whole generation consigned to the countryside, it was a chance at last to change their lives. An ambitious 5.7 million people took the two-day exam in November and December 1977, in what may have been the most competitive and significant academic test in modern Chinese history.

A film depicting this era, Examination 1977, opens nationally from April 3. The movie follows a group of young people from the remote village of Dongbei, who are eager to accept the challenge and fulfill their dreams. Mainland actor Wang Xuebing plays a generous young man Pan Zhiyou, who helps his friends take the exam.