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With many roads blocked, thousands have a tough time reaching the examination venues As if the stress of preparing for the national college
entrance exam, or gaokao, was not enough, flooded roads in parts of
eastern China on Tuesday made it impossible for thousands of students to
get to their testing sites. The government of Shexian county in Anhui province said on Tuesday
that the downpour, which began before dawn, was the heaviest in 50
years. A female student in the county told China Youth Daily that a bus had
been sent to collect some students, but "half of the vehicle's body was
underwater and it couldn't move". Videos from local residents showed many roads in the county blocked
by floodwaters. Some students tried to press ahead in boats offered by
rescuers. The county has 2,769 students aiming to take this year's gaokao, but
only around 500 had arrived at the examination sites by 10 am,
according to Wang Tianping, head of the county's education bureau. Because a gaokao score can determine what college a student may attend, examinees carry their family's hopes for the future. The county was forced to cancel the first day's exams－Chinese
language and mathematics－as most local students failed to reach the two
examination sites on time because of flooding, the local government
said. Large parts of seven provinces and two municipalities along the
Yangtze River have had heavy rainfall since July 4, according to the
National Meteorological Center. Rain was heaviest in Hubei province, with more than 600 millimeters.
Some areas in neighboring Anhui, Hunan and Guizhou provinces saw
between 250 and 480 millimeters of precipitation. The student interviewed by China Youth Daily, who was not named,
said the rain had come unexpectedly, and she and her parents had
received no warning. "It has been quite rainy this season, so we and the school didn't regard it as a big deal. I can't blame the school," she said. She said that it had rained all night and she woke up early in the
morning only to find her community was badly flooded. She and some other
students were trapped in a bus on a flooded road until after 10 am,
when she received a WeChat message that the Chinese language exam,
scheduled to begin at 9 am, had been canceled and would be rescheduled. Meanwhile, the attempt to move the students by bus failed. An announcement from the local government, at around 10 am, conveyed
the message that the first exam had been canceled, but the other three
would go ahead as scheduled. Then, shortly before 2 pm, an announcement from the provincial
education authorities said the mathematics exam had also been canceled
because the waters had not receded. At that point, the two exams
scheduled for Wednesday were still expected to go ahead. Wang said the students had been provided with psychological
counseling to alleviate their stress at the most important moment of
their education to date. To guarantee that the second day's exams would go forward, the
authorities said they had prepared a backup site and would decide
whether to switch to that location early on Wednesday. The National Meteorological Center issued an orange
alert－second-highest of the four-tier alert system－for rainstorms along
the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, with heavy downpours
expected to hit the region from 8 pm on Tuesday to 8 pm on Wednesday. Meanwhile, exams went ahead smoothly in Wuhan, Hubei province, which
was also affected by torrential rains. Teams of more than 2,000
rescuers and some 500 disaster relief vehicles were sent to gather
students. At an afternoon news conference it was announced that no
students were late for their exams. Previously, the annual gaokao has taken place on June 7 and 8, but
the Ministry of Education decided to delay the exam by one month this
year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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