The 1977-78 university exams defined a nation
The winter of 1977 has since proved to have been an extraordinary time for China. In November and December that year, 5.7 million eager candidates ranging in age from 17 to 37 flocked to makeshift exam centres across the country to take the first university entrance examination in more than a decade.
Among them were pig farmers, fishermen, factory workers, former Red Guards, half-illiterate high school students and urban youths sent down to the countryside to learn from peasants. The Cultural Revolution started by Chairman Mao Zedong 11 years before had turned them into a 'delayed generation'. And now they would do anything to catch the 'late bus' of higher education to change their fate.
'My teacher said it's the difference between wearing grass shoes and wearing leather shoes,' said Chen Zhangliang , who was admitted to South China College of Tropical Crops in Hainan province in the autumn of 1978 and is now deputy chairman of Guangxi . 'He urged us to give it our all to seize this opportunity.'
The conditions were harsh. Mr Chen, then just 17 with two years of high school behind him, was tending crops day in and day out in a village in southeastern Fujian province . 'Actually, I went barefoot a lot of times,' he said.
With no money for a hotel in the nearby town where the entrance exam was being held, Mr Chen and his 40 or so fellow candidates carried blankets and grass carpets with them, sleeping on a classroom floor on the eve of the big test.
'I didn't fully understand what a university education was exactly, but I knew it was something that would change my life,' said Mr Chen, who went on to serve as vice-president of Peking University and president of China Agricultural University.
