Beijing Goes into ‘Silent Mode’ For the Gaokao
By Edoardo Donati Fogliazza
Another year, another gaokao season.
All around China, high school students are getting ready to go through the grueling exam that will take place this Friday and Saturday. The nationwide examination ranks college-eligible students and assigns them to higher-education institutions around the country. In China, where the university system cannot meet the overwhelmingly high demand, gaokao results have a tremendous impact on a student’s future and are directly linked to their chances of employment and income prospects. In short, the gaokao is a massive deal.
As such, local governments do anything necessary to make sure the environment is suitable for their students to achieve the best performance possible, and Beijing is no exception.
READ MORE: Explainer: Everything You Need to Know About the Gaokao
In a set of regulations released between June 3-5 by the Beijing municipal government, authorities called on all city bureaus to pay special attention to their areas of competence (including traffic and security) and effectively set out to change the face of the city for these fateful few days.
First, the city will be noticeably more quiet: All building sites will be forced to shut down at night, and no construction company will be allowed to carry out noisy work at any time within 500 meters of an examination site.
Traffic will be tightly controlled around exam points. Public buses will also change or shorten their normal route.
Details regarding five different bus routes serving student areas and even touristic areas have already been published. Changes are as follows:
Lines 79, 611, 664 (heading east): Will not stop at Yuan Da Lukou Xi
Line 46 (all directions): Will not stop at Jiaoyu Bu station (in front of Beijing Normal University)
Line 5 (all directions): Will not stop at Xihua Men (west of the Forbidden City and close to Beijing 616 Middle School)
Beijing authorities encourage every Beijing resident to check relevant websites for future changes and more details. At the moment, the Municipal Commission of Transport released information in a public notice you can access here (Chinese only). Also, buses are forbidden from honking close to exam sites, as reported by China Daily.
To achieve favorable traffic conditions for students, authorities are encouraging people to “choose green means of transportation.” This means avoiding buses or driving on roads that will be flooded by traveling students and by 200 additional vehicles active on 361 new routes that the city’s public transport bureau has decided to put on the streets for the occasion, according to China Daily.
No large gatherings, including sport, entertainment or marketing events will be permitted throughout the duration of the exam, again to help control traffic and noise.
To conclude, we suggest you plan ahead if you wish to take advantage of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday to visit parts of Beijing. The golden rule seems to be this: Stay out of the roads and stick to the subway.
[Cover image via China Daily]
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