New Delhi: Liang Shi, a 56-year-old Chinese millionaire, has failed China’s tough university entrance exam yet again — for the 27th time.
This time, Liang was able to score 424 out of 750 points, 34 points short of the baseline required to apply for any university in China. He took the test, known as Gaokao, on 7 June and the results were announced last Friday.
Known as “the No.1 Gaokao holdout”, Liang had abstained from drinking and playing mahjong to focus on studying. But unlike the previous tests, this year’s result seems to have affected him.
Liang has been quoted as saying that he was not sure if he would give another attempt at cracking the notoriously difficult exam. “I might give up (next year). If I do attend it next year, I will give up my last name Liang if I fail,” the millionaire told Tianmu News.
Liang first took the test in 1983 as a 16-year-old. Having failed in his first attempt, the university aspirant kept on taking the test until 1992, when he was declared too old to sit for the exam.
All this while, Liang had kept on doing side jobs to earn a living while trying his luck at pursuing a university degree. He went on to start his own timber wholesale business in the mid-1990s, after the factory he was working in went bankrupt.
His business did well and Liang made one million yuan within a year. He then went on to start a construction material business too.
But this entrepreneur always dreamt of getting accepted into a prestigious university and becoming an “intellectual”. He got another chance when the Chinese government removed the age bar for the Gaokao test in 2001.
Liang has said that he was initially motivated to change his fate by gaining a college degree but this soon changed to an unwillingness to give up. In an interview to a local media outlet in 2014, Liang said, “I think it’s such a pity if you don’t go to college, your life won’t be complete without higher education.”
The Gaokao tests high school pass outs on their Chinese, Mathematics, English and another science or humanities subject of their choice. Government data has revealed that only 41.6 per cent candidates were accepted into universities or colleges in 2021 in China. Nearly 13 million students appeared for the entrance test this year.
Also read:Driven by people-to-people ties, India & US relationship has outgrown China