An education in the countryside

Guo Fang, a world history researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was the 1977 arts champion in the Beijing gaokao.

When China's former leader Deng Xiaoping made the decision to resume the gaokao in late 1977, following its suspension during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), Guo Fang was working in the fields in North China's Shanxi province. Home was a settlement so remote that any news from the outside world was out of date before it reached the villagers' ears.

If his father had not been seriously ill in Beijing, Guo would not have been granted special permission to return to the capital and would definitely have missed the examination that was to change his life.