Milestones: 1977

A street performance in Shanyin county, Shanxi province, celebrates the crackdown on the "Gang of Four" in 1977. The "Gang of Four" was detained in October 1976. Yang Zhongzhen

-- The National College Entrance Examination resumes. In November and December, 5.7 million eager candidates flock to makeshift exam centers across the country to take the first university entrance exam in more than a decade. Some 270,000 students who pass the two-day test are subsequently enrolled.

-- Hua Guofeng announces the "successful end of the great proletarian cultural revolution" in August.