My Second Gaokao

My first gaokao was in July 1998. My score that year passed the key-university cutoff, but I filled out my application poorly, so I actually wanted to retake it immediately in 1998. But my family's finances were terrible; both my brother and I were in college, and I had already been admitted to a decent key university. My family refused to support a year of repeat study, so I let it go.

On May 3, 2012, my mother passed away, a severe blow. That year, seeing how obsessed I had become with medicine, my wife suggested I retake the gaokao, get into a medical school, study for a few years, and formally practice medicine. But my son was still small, and the cost of living in Beijing was high; if I went to school, the entire financial burden would fall on my wife.

I have always been very considerate of others and unwilling to let my wife carry the family's financial pressure alone, so I chose to study medicine and get certified through the traditional TCM apprenticeship (shicheng) route, which did not interfere with my work. Later, apprentices could also sit for the TCM specialist physician qualification exam, which I did.

Gradually I felt no need to retake the gaokao. But shicheng and specialist qualifications are, in truth, chicken ribs — useful for nothing. TCM doctors of this background sit at the very bottom of the medical system's pecking order, facing much discrimination and restriction, with poor career potential. If someone truly loves medicine and wants to do clinical work and research seriously, I would not recommend this path.

In 2018, for an exam, I wrote tens of thousands of words of materials, including successfully treated cases. These were seen by the director of our local Health Commission, who was full of praise. Personally, he was a former colleague and close friend of my master — my uncle-shi, so to speak. We hit it off at once and became friends across generations; I have since called him Uncle.

The first time we met, he told me: whether or not you take the specialist exam, you should consider retaking the gaokao and getting a bachelor's or associate degree at a medical school. With your talent and perseverance, you could one day become a great physician, but without a medical-school education you will never enter the inner circle and will always be seen by peers as second-rate; that would bury your talent and ambition.

From then on he became the most forceful elder urging me to take the gaokao. He had risen step by step from an ophthalmologist at a grassroots hospital to head of the Health Commission, holding the title of chief physician. He repeatedly encouraged me, often calling, sending local specialties for the holidays, and hosting me whenever I returned home. He reasoned and pleaded with me to retake the exam as soon as possible. Ashamed, I kept putting him off with excuses — my son was still small, I could not freely dispose of my life — and delayed again and again.

But this uncle kept at it, calling every few days and urging me, time after time, to seriously consider his advice. At one point I had cold feet and wanted to leave the medical profession; he earnestly urged me not to forget my original aspiration. He said the world lacks good doctors, that I had the makings of one, and that he hoped I would not give up. He finally moved me, and I began to seriously consider a second gaokao.

Last November I finally made up my mind and registered for the 2024 gaokao back in my hometown. Unfortunately, not long after registering I was in a car accident. I had planned to prepare seriously after registering, but after the crash I often had headaches, worse the more I bent over my desk. During a period of going to the library to drill problems, my head felt as if it would burst, and I finally had to give up preparation. I have many patients and a heavy workload already; on top of that, high-intensity exam prep plus daily reading and writing was more than my body could bear.

So I actually wanted to skip this year's gaokao, but this uncle insisted that even if I did poorly, I should sit it this year to test my level and see what score I could get, scouting the way for next year. My closest relatives and friends also urged me, since I had already registered and had the physical exam, to just go take it once.

Thus, encouraged by them, I finally walked into the gaokao room. A middle-aged person retaking the gaokao and going through university again has to overcome many difficulties. My wife said: the children are grown and in college now, we are financially free, you have done enough for the family over the years and fulfilled your responsibilities; for the rest of your life you are free to dispose of yourself, no need to worry about the home.

The elders at home, though old, are fortunately still fairly sturdy, so these years I could indeed free myself to receive a complete higher education. The right time, the right place, and the right people have all come together, and I have finally taken this step.

I bought a ticket home for the evening of June 4, 2024, riding a sleeper overnight. On June 5, after completing my hukou transfer procedures in my hometown, I collected my admission ticket from the Education Bureau's admissions office. The staff told me that on the afternoon of June 6, we social candidates could familiarize ourselves with the exam site. From June 6 I formally entered pre-exam mode, turning off my phone and cutting off outside distractions.

My uncle-shi, seeing me finally return to take the gaokao, was delighted. He hosted a big dinner for me, booked a hotel near the exam site to make it convenient, and insisted on driving me there and back every day on his small motorcycle. With an uncle like that, it would have been embarrassing to slip away and skip the exam, for fear of disappointing this kind elder.

My last gaokao was 26 years ago; the rules had long since faded from memory, and the rules now are different from 26 years ago. So when I went to see the site on June 6, I knew none of the rules: I walked in with my phone and was stopped at security. The security staff told me that parents of candidates were not allowed inside. I showed them my admission ticket and ID, saying I was the candidate, not a parent. The security officer was taken aback; probably they had never encountered an older candidate like me.

Then they told me I could not bring a phone in. I explained that I was an independent social candidate, unlike these fresh graduates who had teachers at school coaching them on the rules; I had received no briefing, so I thought I could bring a phone to see the site the day before, and asked their forgiveness. I handed over my phone for safekeeping, saying I would return it after visiting my assigned rooms.

The security staff finally relented and let me in with the phone. But as I toured the site, the school's security guards spotted this "oddball" again and shouted: who let a parent in? Parents are not allowed inside. Then they spotted the phone in my hand and lectured me again.

I said to the security guard: you are meticulous and doing your job well, but sorry, I am the candidate, not a parent; here is my admission ticket and ID, please check. After verifying, his face fell, but he still insisted on walking me to the entrance checkpoint to cross-check. By then I had finished looking around, so I walked out with him.

I have grown used to being treated this way. From the moment I returned to register, I was treated specially at every step. When I registered, the admissions staff thought I was enrolling for my child. At the physical exam, the doctor did not believe I was a candidate; after checking all my documents, one said: it is rare to see someone your age taking the gaokao. You really love learning; people our age play mahjong or go fishing in their free time, but you are going to university — your perseverance is extraordinary.

People my age retaking the gaokao are indeed rare; our small county had probably never had such an older candidate. So on my way back to take the exam I was treated specially at every turn, and I accepted it calmly, smiling at everyone who stared at me as a curiosity. A high school classmate of mine teaches at my old high school; one of his colleagues happened to be an invigilator for one of my sessions. After the exam, he excitedly told his colleagues about the oddity of seeing a candidate in his forties. My classmate said: stop, I know exactly who that candidate is.

I wanted to take the gaokao quietly, but I could not escape becoming everyone's after-dinner talk. My older brother joked: why hasn't a reporter come to interview you? The strangers who encountered me in the exam hall probably all found me a curiosity. I saw several people sneak looks at my admission ticket and ID — these must be carried in transparent document bags when entering the exam room, so others can see.

From childhood to adulthood I have had many experiences of being treated as an oddball, so I have adapted. The proportion of middle-aged people retaking the gaokao is perhaps under one in ten thousand; being treated as a novelty is only human, and I can only answer with silence and a smile. If you want to walk a path different from others, you must have the courage to meet strange stares.

The first subject, Chinese, went easily. This year's gaokao, apart from math and physics which were calculation-heavy, the other subjects I sat — Chinese, English, chemistry, biology — were application-oriented, mainly testing problem-solving and adaptability. Because I have kept up daily reading and writing for years, I had an advantage in Chinese and did not find it painful.

But the second subject, math, nearly broke me. The math problems were really well set; except that I basically could not solve any of them, they had no faults. In high school I often scored full marks in math and physics, but I had dropped them for 26 years and lacked time and energy to review; though I glanced at math before the exam, I had covered less than a tenth of high-school math. Twenty-six years after parting, math and I met again in the gaokao room; many symbols recognized me, but I did not recognize them. Tears welled up as the exam began; I did not know how to put pen to paper.

Fortunately, just before the exam, my son — who studies math at university — had imparted the secret of test-taking: Dad, when the time comes, just stomp your foot on the answer sheet and fill it in according to the footprint. In the emergency I remembered this advice and thought it was wonderfully clever. But doing that would surely draw invigilator stares, so I instead followed my feelings, putting on an act and answering as I pleased.

Math lasts two hours; if you cannot solve the problems, those two hours are torture. I could have handed in my paper early and left, but thinking that would disturb the children in the same room and hurt their performance, I felt that doing so would be a grave sin. So I gritted my teeth and kept up the pretense of working hard.

At last the exam ended, and I was greatly relieved. After math, I briefly wanted to abandon the gaokao and slink back to Beijing. But on the way out, I heard many candidates wailing about how hard this year's math was, saying they could not solve a single big problem. I thought, perhaps I could sit one more and see.

After math came English. My English listening had seriously atrophied, so I chose by feel. Like Chinese, English mainly tests language application, so the written section was not impossible for me, and I did reasonably. Listening to the fresh graduates discuss the paper afterward, my comprehension of the texts seemed to have been correct, and I felt much easier.

Then came physics and chemistry, and the same feeling as in math returned. Physics was a little better — I could barely answer a few multiple-choice and experiment questions, but the big final problems left me gazing at the ocean. This year's chemistry was so hard that even my old classmate who teaches chemistry in high school found it unbelievable; he could not solve the big problems either. That made me feel better: it seems nobody's chemistry score will be great.

My last subject was biology, which we had not studied seriously in high school — biology, like PE, was often taken over by the main-subject teachers. But I have read many biology monographs each year over the past years, and this year's biology questions were application-oriented, so I did them fairly handily; biology will probably not be a zero.

Afterward I roughly calculated: my score would probably get me into a medical junior college, but not a bachelor's program. My original plan was that, if this year failed, I would prepare seriously for another year and aim for a bachelor's next year. But during the gaokao I saw that my 77-year-old father's memory had declined severely, showing early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. I knew the window life had left me was short; I could not spend the next five or six years on campus.

On top of that, the uncle who had urged me to take the gaokao now strongly advised me to just attend a junior college first. He said there was no need for me to waste so much time in medical school, nor to waste so much drilling on math, physics, and chemistry, which would be of little use to my future work. He thought a medical diploma, enough to stand openly against the academy, would suffice; everything else would depend on my own effort and ability.

After weighing everything, I felt my room for whim was limited: the child is grown and can be disregarded, but the father is old and cannot. So if I get an admission letter this year, I will go; after graduation I will use self-study exams to move from junior to bachelor's and complete my medical degree. And the odds are good I will get such a letter — not because I am so impressive that I can test into a junior college cold after 26 years away from textbooks, but because the junior-college threshold nowadays is simply too low.

During the last two days of my gaokao, my father sat beside me the whole time. Afterward he asked: "Little one (his term for his youngest son), can you get 600 this year?" I told him I would thank heaven if I got half. Memory decline in the elderly is unfortunate, but it has a lovable side. My father's long-term memory is fairly intact; he just forgets recent events too quickly — one of the typical signs of early Alzheimer's.

His memory of my exam ability is stuck in my high-school years; he still cherishes all my prize certificates from math olympiads in middle and high school. In his eyes, his son, no matter how many years have passed, can still study and test as he did then. An old man with such a distorted cognition is, in its way, a kind of happiness; after all, it helps him look on life optimistically.

A second gaokao, a second higher education — a major life event. I do not know whether I will forget all this someday; while memory is still fresh off the wok, I record it like a running ledger. Twenty years from now, reading this again may bring yet another feeling to my heart.