From there, mother and son visited five kindergartens with so-called international standards to be interviewed. Only two accepted her son, and the less expensive one charged tuition fees of 110,000 yuan (HK$126,000) per year, excluding accommodation, meals and uniforms.

Tian is one of hundreds of thousands of parents trying to get their children into mainland kindergartens. It's more difficult these days to enrol in a kindergarten than to become a civil servant or enter a university, and this is the education-related issue provoking the most discussion and complaints on internet forums.

One scene three months ago in Beijing was especially poignant. More than 100 parents spent nine days and eight nights queuing up in front of a kindergarten in Changping district with camp beds, tents and chairs. Most went home empty-handed. In Nanjing , Jiangsu province, the chief of a public kindergarten that admits about 80 students each semester said he had received more than 800 letters from officials, friends and relatives asking for favours to enrol their children.

At a time when a million or so university graduates can't find jobs, the ferocity of the competition trickles back through the educational system - past the pressure-packed college entrance exam, past the extracurricular classes that cost thousands of yuan in fees, all the way back to needing a CV and a portfolio for 2 1/2- to six-year-olds to enter a kindergarten.

Why is it so difficult? Basically, there are too many children and not enough facilities.

Since the People's Republic was founded in 1949, it has seen four 'baby peaks', explained Chen Wei , professor of Renmin University's Population Development Studies Centre. 'This peak started in 2005 and will end around 2015,' he said. 'About 16 million to 18 million babies are being born every year.'

The three previous peaks happened in the 1950s, from the end of the 60s to the beginning of the 70s, and at the end of the 80s.

In the current peak, the 2007 and 2008 births climbed the most. In Chinese culture, 2007 was the 'golden pig year', and people believed a baby born then would be luckier and become richer than those born in other years. 2008 was the year the Olympic Games were held in Beijing, which made parents think it would give their babies more significance. The National Statistics Administration said 15.9 million babies were born in 2007 and 16.1 million in 2008.

Now those children are either in kindergarten or trying to get in, but there just aren't enough places. The Beijing News said about 415,700 babies were born in Beijing from 2007 to 2009, but the city's 844 public and 409 private kindergartens can take in only about 248,000.

What's more, those spots are only for families holding Beijing hukou, or permanent residency status, and even then, they fulfil only 80 per cent of the need. More than half of the 20 million residents in the municipality do not have Beijing hukou. The Beijing Pre-school Education Development Plan says: 'As the capital's economy grows rapidly, it is difficult to predict how many people would flood in from other areas and deplete the current limited preschool education resources.'

There used to be more kindergartens. They were all public and government-financed from 1979. But since the 1990s, regulations have required kindergartens that were opened by state-owned companies and residential communities to be privately financed. State media said the number of kindergartens fell 35.3 per cent between 1992 and 2002.

'We discovered in 2003 that we could not accept more children because my kindergarten was already too crowded,' Jin Xiaoming , chief executive of Songyu Dong Kindergarten in Beijing, said. Today the situation is no better. Zhang Xiaohong , official of the Beijing Education Bureau, said: 'The key to the difficulty of entering a kindergarten is in supply and demand. Public kindergartens are of high quality and people want to send their children there, but there are too few of them ... Tuition at a private kindergarten is very expensive.'

Public kindergartens are the cheapest, and there is competition because of that. One other thing is a factor: civil servants' children - rightly or wrongly - get priority.

Beijing No1 Kindergarten, a public school founded in 1949, has more than 400 students and tuition is very cheap - 490 yuan for a whole month of day care and an extra 100 yuan if the child needs overnight accommodation. But The Beijing News said most of the pupils were children of government officials. Requests from various government divisions take up more than 100 seats a year, leaving almost none for the average family.

They have little choice, then, but to turn to expensive licensed private kindergartens, or to a third type - those that operate underground.

Data from the Beijing People's Political Consultative Conference showed there were 1,298 underground kindergartens in the city last year - 32 more than the number of licensed kindergartens. Tuition is acceptable for most parents - 380 yuan a month, not including lunch. But a lack of security and qualified teachers are the major concerns. Parents are caught between opting for a less safe underground school and keeping the children at home and risking the loss of their competitive edge.

Some parents who want the best for their children have no choice but to pay what the private outfits charge - fees of at least 4,000 yuan a month, enough to cause most Beijing parents to feel the pinch. The range at the so-called international kindergartens to which Tian Ying applied was 110,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan a year.

The climate of insufficient facilities and exorbitant tuition is the chief source of frustration for most parents. 'Kindergarten education does not belong to the compulsory education system and is a money-making market,' Professor Zhang Ming of Renmin University said.

'The government has encouraged building more private kindergartens with high tuition. Parents have only one child now, they have huge expectations of their children and can't afford the risk that their children might get less education than someone else's.

'In China, education has become a transaction. Schools and kindergartens use education to make money.'

Next month, Tian's younger son will attend an international kindergarten, for which she will pay about triple the average salary of a Beijing resident last year (44,715 yuan). 'As a mother,' she said, 'I'll do anything so that my son can have a good education in a safe environment.'