外媒：中国高考是世界上最难的考试吗？

本文选自《卫报》（The Guardian）长篇深度阅读栏目（The Long Read）。

Is China's gaokao the world's toughest school exam?

中国高考是世界上最难的考试吗？

Chinese children must endure years of stress and impossible expectations preparing for their final school exam. The students who do best can look forward to glittering careers and even good marriage prospects. But for the less successful, the system is brutal.

By Alec Ash

For two days in early June every year, China comes to a standstill as high school students who are about to graduate take their college entrance exams. Literally the “higher examination”, the gaokao is a national event on a par with a public holiday, but much less fun. Construction work is halted near examination halls, so as not to disturb the students, and traffic is diverted. Ambulances are on call outside in case of nervous collapses, and police cars patrol to keep the streets quiet. Radio talkshow hosts discuss the format and questions in painstaking detail, and when the results come out, the top scorers are feted nationally. A high or low mark determines life opportunities and earning potential. That score is the most important number of any Chinese child's life, the culmination of years of schooling, memorisation and constant stress.

standstill

表示“静止（状态）；停顿，停滞”，英文解释为“a situation in which there is no movement or activity at all”通常用法：come to a standstill/bring sth to a standstill，举个🌰：

Strikers brought production to a standstill.

罢工者使生产陷于停顿。

on a par (with sb/sth)

表示“和…同样，不相上下，不分伯仲”，英文解释为“the same as or equal to someone or something”举个🌰：

The regeneration of the city's downtown dock front will put it on a par with Nice or Cannes.

市中心临码头地区重建后，该市将能与尼斯或戛纳相媲美。

fete

表示“赞扬；隆重欢迎”，英文解释为“to praise or welcome someone publicly because of their achievements”举个🌰：

She was feted by audiences both in her own country and abroad.

她受到国内外观众的高度赞扬。

On 8 June, the final afternoon of this year's gaokao, parents of exam takers at one school in Beijing were packed tight around the school gate, jostling to get to the front of the crowd where a white metal barrier held them back. Special security guards handed out water bottles and cheap paper fans, while another manned a first aid stand under a large parasol. Cars were parked all the way around the bend of the road leading to the gate, simmering in the summer heat. “They're all here to pick up their kids,” a city police officer patiently explained to a driver struggling to find a space. A red banner above the barrier declared the school a “National unified gaokao examination point”. At the first sign of movement inside, the parents pushed in closer, craning their necks to spot their children emerging.

jostle

表示“（在人群中）挤，推，撞，搡”，英文解释为“to push roughly against sb in a crowd”举个🌰：

People were jostling, arguing and complaining.

人们推推搡搡，争吵着抱怨着。

crane

表示“伸长（脖子）”，英文解释为“If you crane your neck or head, you stretch your neck in a particular direction in order to see or hear something better.”举个🌰：

She craned her neck to get a better view.

她伸长脖子以便看得清楚一些。

Shortly after 5pm, a student named Yuan Qi walked out clutching a clear pencil case and wearing a dazed expression. Around him, hundreds of exam-takers celebrated the end of their ordeal. Some clutched bouquets of flowers given to them by their parents; others posed awkwardly for photographs. Yuan Qi's father, an administrator in the People's Liberation Army, was dressed in shorts and a polo neck. He had been at the front of the crowd, holding his phone up high to record the moment. But when his son came out, he greeted him silently and led him away from the hubbub to where his mother was waiting. She took his pencil case to stop him fidgeting with it. “Hard?” another parent asked Yuan Qi as they passed. “Depends which subject,” he replied. His father beamed with pride.

clutch

表示“紧握，紧抓”，英文解释为“to hold something tightly because you do not want to lose it”举个🌰：

She was clutching a bottle of champagne.

她手里紧紧抓着一瓶香槟酒。

ordeal

表示“可怕的经历，痛苦的折磨”，英文解释为“a terrible or painful experience that continues for a period of time”举个🌰：

He was beginning to wonder if he would survive the ordeal.

他开始怀疑自己能否熬过这场磨难。

hubbub

1) 表示“（人群的）喧闹声，嘈杂声”，英文解释为“a mixture of loud noises, especially the noise of a lot of people talking at the same time”，如：the hubbub from the market 市场的嘈杂声。

2) 表示“熙攘；喧闹；混乱”，英文解释为“a situation in which there is a lot of activity, excitement, or argument”。

Yuan Qi is 18, thin and wiry, with blue half-rim spectacles, close-cropped hair and budding wisps on his upper lip. A student at Beijing 101 school, one of the capital's most prestigious boarding schools, he is the nervous sort – constantly fiddling with stationery or picking at his fingers. He has a habit of rushing to the end of his sentences, slurring his words when excited, as if frustrated that telepathy is not an option. Ever since he was a young boy, growing up in Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing, Yuan Qi has had a talent for maths, science and problem solving. He loves reading murder mysteries, especially Agatha Christie novels in Chinese translation, which is how he came up with his English name – Hercule – although his moustache is yet to live up to it.

slur

表示“含糊地说，口齿不清地说”，英文解释为“to pronounce the sounds of a word in a way that is wrong or not clear”举个🌰：

Her speech was slurred but she still denied she was drunk.

她口齿都不清楚了，但还不承认自己喝醉了。

The first time a teacher of his mentioned the gaokao, Yuan Qi was in primary school. Used as a distant incentive for working hard, the word kept cropping up in school and at the dinner table until it dawned on him just how high the stakes were. While college entrance is competitive in any country, in China the top universities can select as few as one in 50,000 students. Competition is intense for white-collar jobs, with a graduate unemployment rate of about 16%, and which college a student goes to has an immediate impact on career and even marriage prospects. That placement is decided by a single factor: their three-digit gaokao score.

dawn on

表示“使开始明白”，英文解释为“If a fact or idea dawns on you, you realize it.”举个🌰：

It gradually dawned on me that I still had talent and ought to run again.

我渐渐明白我还有能力，应该再参加一次。

With so much to gain or lose, cheating is a big problem. Spy cameras, radio devices and earpieces that transmit questions and receive answers have been found hidden in jewellery, spectacles, wallets, pens, rulers and underwear. Most examination rooms install CCTV cameras, and some use metal detectors. Last year, police busted a syndicate in Jiangxi province, where professional exam-takers were charging parents up to a million yuan (£121,300) to pose as students. In Luoyang, a city in Henan province, examiners deployed a drone to hover above school buildings and scan for radio signals sent in or out. Fingerprint and iris-matching has been used to verify the identity of students. Exam papers are escorted to schools by security guards and monitored with GPS trackers, while the examiners who draft them are kept under close scrutiny in order to avoid leaks. This year, new regulations came into effect that could sentence cheats to up to seven years in prison.

bust

1) 表示“（以某罪名）逮捕；起诉”，英文解释为“if the police bust someone, they charge them with a crime”；

2) 表示“突击搜查”，英文解释为“if the police bust a place, they go into it to look for something illegal”举个🌰：

Federal agents busted several money-exchange businesses.

联邦探员突击搜查了几家货币汇兑店。

syndicate

表示“联合组织”，英文解释为“A syndicate is an association of people or organizations that is formed for business purposes or in order to carry out a project.”

Yuan Qi was quietly confident. In his mocks he was averaging in the 690s, out of a maximum of 750 – good enough to get into the capital's elite universities. He had been cramming for 12 hours a day in the months leading up to the test, with extra classes at weekends. Since March, he had been operating on just six or seven hours sleep a night. Every possible step had been taken to maximise his chances of succeeding. The day before the first morning paper, his parents had rented a hotel room next to Tsinghua University middle school, where he would sit his papers, so that they could arrange his meals and attend to his every other need. By that point, Yuan Qi had spent so much time doing mock exams that he was totally inured to the real thing, which passed in a haze.

mocks

表示“模拟考试”，英文解释为“school examinations taken as practice before official examinations”。

cram for

表示“（为应考）临时死记硬背；突击学习”，英文解释为“to learn a lot of things in a short time, in preparation for an exam”举个🌰：

He's been cramming for his exams all week.

他整个星期都一直在拼命准备应考。

sit

熟词僻义，表示“to do an exam”，英文解释为“参加考试；应试”举个🌰：

Candidates will sit the examinations in June.

考生将在六月参加考试。

be inured to

表示“习以为常的，适应”，英文解释为“If you are inured to something unpleasant, you have become used to it so that it no longer affects you.”举个🌰：

Doctors become inured to death.

医生们对死亡变得习以为常。

“It went about usual,” he told me as we walked back to his hotel, massaging his wrist. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Now I just want to go home and play some games.” Yuan Qi's father was still recording videos of him, still grinning. “The exam is very nerve-racking, and each time when I was standing outside, before it began, I was terrified. But when you're actually taking it it's not so bad.” Now that the struggle was over, there was nothing he could do but wait for the result.

nerve-racking

表示“令人十分紧张的；令人焦虑不安的”，英文解释为“making you feel very nervous and worried”。

The gaokao is emblematic of the Chinese education system as a whole. In the west, it is often seen as monolithic and rote; in China as tough but fair. In Europe and America, there is the notion that Chinese schools produce automatons incapable of critical thought; in China, many seem to think that western classrooms are full of students standing on desks and ripping up textbooks, à la Dead Poets Society. Yet, where the Chinese model used to be roundly criticised for rewarding rote learning, now the system's gruelling schedule and supposed high standards are increasingly admired overseas. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, has praised Shanghai’s school system with at times absurd hyperbole. (One column was fawningly titled “The Shanghai Secret”.) Last year, the BBC invited two Chinese teachers to take over a sixth-form class in the documentary Are Our Kids Tough Enough? (Spoiler: they weren’t, but nor were the teachers.)

monolithic

1) 表示“（组织、政治制度等）庞大而难以改变的，铁板一块的”，英文解释为“a monolithic organization, political system etc is very large and powerful and difficult to change”

2) 表示“（建筑物）庞大结实的，气势宏伟的，磐石般的”，英文解释为“a monolithic building is very large, solid, and impressive”。

rote

表示“死记硬背”，英文解释为“when you learn something by repeating it many times, without thinking about it carefully or without understanding it”举个🌰：

In old-fashioned schools, much learning was by rote.

在旧式学校里，很多学习都是靠死记硬背。

à la

表示“仿照；按照（某人）的方式”，英文解释为“If you do something à la a particular person, you do it in the same style or in the same way that they would do it.”

In China there are no illusions about the system being perfect. The exam is widely criticised for putting impossible pressures on children. Dissatisfaction with the gaokao is one reason that, among wealthier segments of the population, large numbers of students are choosing to study abroad. But, ultimately, most people support it, or at least see no alternative. “China has too many people,” is a common refrain, used to excuse everything from urban traffic to rural poverty. Given the intense competition for finite higher education resources, the argument goes, there has to be some way to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to give hardworking students from poorer backgrounds a chance to rise to the top.

separate the wheat from the chaff

表示“区别好坏；去芜存菁”，英文解释为“to separate things or people that are of high quality or ability from those that are not”举个🌰：

The first round of interviews really separates the wheat from the chaff.

第一轮面试确实分出了优劣。

The tradition of a single exam that decides a young person' prospects is one that goes back to antiquity in China. The imperial examinations or keju, which tested applicants for government office, was introduced in the Han dynasty (206BC to AD220), and became the sole criterion for selection from the 7th century until its abolition in 1905. Aspiring bureaucrats sat a three-day exam locked inside a single cell, in which they also slept and ate. The “eight-legged essay” was the most important paper, an argument in eight sections that elaborated on a theme while quoting from classics such as Confucius and Mencius. All applicants were checked for hidden scrolls; writing quotes on underwear was a popular form of cheating until examiners cottoned on. The pass rate was 1%. Nervous collapses were routine. There is even a ghost-deity associated with exams in China: Zhong Kui, a scholar who killed himself when he was denied first place.

注：唐代中南进士钟馗入京赴考，皇上因其相貌陋丑而未进入榜，钟落第，愤而自杀。

The gaokao is made up of four three-hour papers: Chinese, English, maths and a choice of either sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) or humanities (geography, history, politics). The questions are mostly multiple-choice or fill-in-the-gap, and are notoriously hard – the maths paper has been compared to university-level maths in the UK. But for many students, the most intimidating element is the essay in the Chinese exam. Students are given an hour to write on one of two prompts, which are often infuriatingly elliptical. Prompts in 2015 included “Do butterfly wings have colours?” and “Who do you admire the most? A biotechnology researcher, a welding engineering technician or a photographer?”. This summer, Yuan Qi’s choice was between “Old accent” and “Mysterious bookmark”. (He picked old accent.)

elliptical

表示“（言辞或文章）晦涩的，隐晦的”，英文解释为“elliptical speech or writing is difficult to understand because more is meant than is actually said”举个🌰：

The language is often elliptical and ambiguous.

语言经常是隐晦和模棱两可的。

It is no surprise that, for many students, the pressure heaped on them by parents, teachers and themselves, is overwhelming. It is possible to retake the exam one year later, but if a student continues to fail there is no safety net or alternative path to university. Suicides are a regular feature of every exam season; a 2014 study claimed that exam stress was a contributing factor in 93% of cases in which school students took their own lives. Last year, a middle school in Hebei province fenced off its upper-floor dormitory balconies with grates, after two students jumped to their deaths in the months leading up to the gaokao. And the academic stress starts early – in July a 10-year-old boy tried to kill himself in oncoming traffic after fighting with his mother about homework. But still the study mill grinds on.

未完不续

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