Just a few quick links from over the weekend while YJ gets Sunday dinner on. Best part about pingfang living? Al fresco dining…May to October.
For those of you who don’t have a high-school aged Chinese student living with you (or missed the mothers chain smoking by the side of the road) this weekend is the gaokao, the annual battery of tests that determine whether a particular student will get into the college of their choice and face a future of fulfillment and promise or instead wind up a miserable failure, openly mocked by family and family friends as they descend into a never-ending shame spiral of disgrace and limited options. Seriously, great fun!
Two biggest worries for 2009? Cheating and the flu. That and the possibility of some 17-year old kid snapping like a twig and stating to gnaw off his own foot while waiting for his test booklet.
Speaking of youth under pressure…the kids of today should feel fortunate that the competition has been thinned a bit by three decades of the One Child Policy, which is all good if you’re taking a college entrance exam with a strict quota system in place but not so much