‘See his mum one last time’: Chinese doctor says only son should know about dying mother despite crucial exam, triggering academic pressure debate

“If he wants to bid her farewell, you cannot hide the truth from him, or he might suffer the pain of his loss for a long time,” Li told the boy’s father, adding: “If it distracts him from the gaokao, he can take it again next year.”

The doctor’s advice has sparked a heated discussion online, with many expressing disbelief that anyone would even consider putting an academic examination before a child’s right to see their dying mother.

“I don’t understand why anyone would think the gaokao is more important than seeing a dying mother for the last time,” one person said.

“If there are any worries that the news might distract the son from the exam, then I can only say our education system is a complete failure,” commented another.

News reports detailing how families hide bad medical news from relatives during gaokao season to prevent a negative impact on exam performance are not uncommon in China.

In 2021, an exam candidate from central China was reportedly only told about his father being rendered unconscious in an accident after he sat the test.

First held in 1952 and resumed in 1977, the gaokao is seen as the country’s most competitive exam on which the future of most secondary school students depends.

Only 1.62 per cent of 11.93 million candidates gained entrance to China’s 39 top, so-called “985” universities last year, according to gaosan.com, a web portal which specialises in information about the national university entrance exams.

It is so competitive that an old Chinese saying compares it to “thousands of soldiers and horses crossing a single log bridge”.

The number of candidates this year was estimated to be 12.91 million, the highest since 2010.

The gaokao is considered so crucial to a person’s future that some people take and retake the exam year after year, sometimes for decades, to gain admission to their dream school.

One of the most obsessive candidates was a 56-year-old man from southwest China’s Sichuan province.

Liang Shi, who became a millionaire in the 1990s and owned a wood factory until last year, took his 27th gaokao this year. He told Jiupai News that going to first-tier universities had become “a hope that his life depends on”.