Gaokao superstitions: Help from beyond

Purple underwear? Qipao? Anxious test-takers and parents have many rituals for the big day in the hope of successful results

For parents accustomed to being hyperinvolved in every stage of their offsprings' academic careers, the national college entrance examination, also known as gaokao, can feel like two or three days of hopeless futility.

A total of 9.4 million Chinese high school students sit the national college entrance examination this year, which was kicked off on June 7, the Ministry of Education said.

Some 3.72 million of these students are expected to enroll in undergraduate degrees following the examination, an increase of nearly 10,000 compared to 2016, according to the 2017 enrollment plan issued by the ministry.

Parents of the students have spent the past year (or three) making their kids give up any semblance of a social life. With their prodigies shut inside the testing center, the only thing for the parents to do was claw at the chain-link fence, glare at passing cars and imagine the worst.

But where human assistance fails, supernatural assistance is always an alternative. You've probably seen the red charms that parents and students have hung in Confucius temples and outside testing centers around the country to pray for a good result, but that's pretty passe.

Maybe it's all that free time, but over the years, anxious parents waiting outside testing centers have come up with an ever-evolving list of superstitious rituals they and their offspring can perform in daily life before, during and after the day's exam activities to ensure all goes well.

It's not exactly clear how these superstitions got started, but this year they've captured the bemused attention of the nice folks at Xinhua News Agency, which prompted several Chinese media outlets to publish helpful summaries: On June 7, the first day of the gaokao, Xinhua photographed a long line of mothers standing outside Shenyang Railway Experimental Secondary School in dazzling qipao. Parents told reporters that an online post of unknown origin that had been making its way through social media whispered to them the homonymous sartorial rules for success in the test.

Here's our translation of the post, found on Weibo:

On the first day of gaokao (students) ought to wear red and green, signaling "red door opening" (an expression usually applied to new businesses and meaning success as soon as one opens their door) and "green light the whole way through". On the second day, students should wear gray (灰 huī) and yellow (黃 huáng), indicating "destined for glory (輝煌 huīhuáng)". Mothers dropping off the test-taker must wear qipao (旗袍 qípáo), as it indicates "success as soon as the flag (旗 qí) is raised (as soon as the battle starts)". Fathers dropping off the exam-taker must wear magua (馬褂 mǎguà, a Qing-era vest-like tunic), indicating "success immediately upon the arrival of the warhorse (馬 mǎ)".

(Note: These last two expressions are typically used as a pair.)

Other rituals for the exam-taker, according to the list, which was published on Baidu's blogging platform Baijiahao, include this gem: wearing purple underwear. This is due to the expression 紫腚贏 (zǐ dìng yíng) - literally "purple buttocks win", a homonym of 指定贏 (zhǐdìng yíng, a certain win). It's also considered good luck to wear clothes with the Nike logo, as the big checkmark means you'll get all the answers right. By extension, you should not wear any logos that feature a big "X".

You are what you eat

Though several people who took the gaokao in the first decade of the 2000s say that all they did on the morning of the test was eat a fried dough stick and two eggs - signifying a score of 100-the culinary rituals to ensure gaokao success have gotten more sophisticated since then.

One newer tradition is for parents to cook a carp for the test-taker on the evening before or morning of the first day. According to ancient legend, if a carp can jump over the waterfall at Longmen (龍門, "Dragon Gate") Valley on the Yellow River, it will become a dragon. Thus, carpare considered auspicious when you consume them before you undertake any kind of struggle in hope of glorious achievement. The test-taker is supposed to take a bite each from the head, body and tail parts. We've not been able to discover why this is the case.

There are also parents who make their kids eat rice cakes (糕點(diǎn), gāodiǎn) and zongzi (粽子 zòngzi), which together are a homonym for 高中 (gāozhòng). This is presumably not 高中 (gāozhōng - note the different tones) as in "secondary school", which the kids are now done with, but separate characters meaning "high" and "achievement".

Strength in numbers

In Zhengzhou, Henan province, volunteers commission two public buses to park outside Zhengzhou No 1 Secondary School test center and serve as rest areas for waiting parents. The regular bus numbers are replaced with "211" and "985," the designation used by the Ministry of Education for China's first-tier universities, so parents can feel like they're helping out in a spiritual sense by coming in to rest.

You've been told that eight is a lucky number in China, but not so during the gaokao season. There's an expression in Chinese, 七上八下 (qīshàng bāxià), which means having an anxious and confused state of mind, but it also literally means "seven up, eight down." In this case, some parents go for the literal meaning: When booking a hotel room near the test center, they want rooms that end in 7, and avoid rooms that end in 8.

In the test center

Superstition doesn't end at the gate once the test-taker has been dropped off. There's a saying that when the test-takers receive the exam papers, they have to kiss (吻, wěn) it, to make sure they'll pass the test smoothly (穩(wěn), wěn).

There's also a superstition that if you enter the test center from the right and exit from the left (available entrances and exits permitting), it would make things 左右逢源 (zuǒyóu fēng yuán, "all goes smoothly on the left and right"). Do the opposite, and it's 左右為難 (zuǒ yóu wēinán, "difficulty on both left and right"). This is supposedly due to ancient beliefs about the auspiciousness of the right side.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com.cn

The World of Chinese

Word box

高考 gāo kǎo the national college entrance examination

考生 kǎo shēng candidate for an entrance examination

旗袍 qí páo cheongsam

輝煌 huīhuáng glory

糕點(diǎn), gāodiǎn cakes

高中 gāozhòng get success

指定贏 zhǐdìng yíng a certain win

七上八下 qīshàng bāxià) having an anxious and confused state of mind

左右逢源 zuǒyóu fēng yuán everything goes smoothly on the left and right