Zhang Cun, one of the 80,000 candidates in Beijing for the national college entrance exams, successfully completed her two-day test in a quarantine examination room Sunday.

The exam room, decorated with flowers and Chinese knots, helped the teenage girl to keep a relaxing mood. As her mother had contact with SARS patients, Zhang Cun's family is required to stay at home and watch for signs of the disease. To ensure Zhang Cun's exam still went ahead, the education authority in Haidian district opened a special examination room for her.

The exams, which have attracted some 6.13 million applicants this year, a record high, got underway throughout the country in an orderly manner.

The national exams for college admission have traditionally been held every July, however, beginning this year, the exams will be held in June to avoid the mid-summer heat.

But due to the outbreak of SARS, many middle schools across the country were closed in late April, and high school seniors were forced to prepare for the exams at home. Many students appear to have learned a great deal from the unanticipated epidemic disease and have developed the ability to remain calm.

"I have confidence in the sanitation measures that have been taken by schools,'' said Zhao Xuesong, 18, a male student at Shunyi No 3 Middle School in Beijing, "It's natural to have pressure to take such an important test at such a critical moment but it also provides an opportunity to improve ourselves both psychologically and physically.''

He said they would be more capable of handling difficulties and dealing with setbacks.

Moreover, both exam takers and their parents have adopted a healthy attitude with regard to the national college entrance exam.

The traditional phenomenon, which featured applicants taking tests inside classrooms while large crowds of relatives waited outside the school gates under the scorching heat did not occur this year. Instead, dozens of reporters surrounded the examination places.

In Beijing, one of the areas worst hit by SARS, all the exam entrants assigned to 213 exam centres across the city entered the well-disinfected, spacious rooms after showing proof of identity and good health.

All students had undergone temperature screening by infrared thermometers.

In southern China's Guangdong Province, a computer monitoring system has been adopted by a six member supervising team which has supervised more than 400 examination rooms in six cities.

In the exam room for Braille-based exams in Changing Neighbourhood College in eastern China's Shanghai, nine blind but talented seniors were concentrating on the Chinese language exam during the morning. They will take the maths, English and history exams.

Taking blind people's special circumstances into consideration, the blind exams allow half an hour more time to answer the questions, said a local official in charge of affairs related to blind applicants.

In northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, one of the few Chinese regions where no SARS cases have been found, 93,000 students participated in the annual national college entrance exam at the region's 135 exam centres from answering exam sheets in five languages including Chinese and Uygur.

More ethnic minority students all over the country took part in the test this year, an increase of 18 per cent from the previous year. Statistics showed that by the end of 2002, there are a total of 540,000 ethnic students studying in the country's colleges and universities. 

Close

Today's Top News		Top China News
+A death too far in Falun Gong's history ( 2003-07-04) +FM spokesman: central government guarantees Hong Kong people's legal rights ( 2003-07-04) +Nuclear issue to be 'key topic' of China-South Korea talks ( 2003-07-04) +Flood taming begins with sluice gates open ( 2003-07-04) +China to launch two satellites to improve spacecraft safety ( 2003-07-04)		+A death too far in Falun Gong's history ( 2003-07-04) +A death too far in Falun Gong's history ( 2003-07-04) +FM spokesman: central government guarantees Hong Kong people's legal rights ( 2003-07-04) +Economy predicted to grow at 8% ( 2003-07-04) +Broken floodwall endangers Shanghai ( 2003-07-04)