Police act to calm gaokao-crazy parents

Parents of students sitting the national college entrance examinations, or gaokao, will hope their sacrifices have not been in vain, as they besieged school gates, called on police as a taxi service, and booked five-star hotels for their offspring for a midday snooze.

In Beijing, 73,460 students were due to sit the two-day test, which began yesterday.

Traffic was gridlocked around some major road arteries, including near Chenjinglong High School in Chaowai Dajie, Chaoyang district, yesterday afternoon, as police had blocked the road.

Many parents were waiting anxiously outside the school gates in mid-afternoon yesterday, even though students would not be let out until after 5 pm.

"I couldn't sleep for two days," mother Yang Jing told the Global Times, "My son seems OK, he slept soundly last [Wednesday] night."

Yang went shopping yesterday morning to try to calm down, but it only worked for half an hour.

Many parents devote their lives to ensuring their child can achieve a good result. Yang quit her job three years ago just to cook for and take care of her son.

"The three years of [senior] high school are very important, so I needed to make sure food was on the table as soon as he returned from school," Yang said.

Yang's close friends and relatives stopped calling or visiting her house a week ago, so that her son would have peace and quiet for study.

There was a small booth outside the school offering free water, magazines, pens and watches.

"Many students found the classroom did not have a clock, so came to us to borrow them," Fan Yu, a volunteer from Renmin University of China, told the Global Times.

Most parents had booked hotel rooms near schools, so their children could have a nap at midday.

Zhang Yubao said he had tried to reserve a room in a hotel near Chenjinglun High School for his daughter a week ago, but was told all the hotels were booked out.

Zhang said he had no choice but to shell out 1,800 yuan ($283) for a room in a nearby five-star hotel this morning.

The police used helicopters to monitor real-time traffic conditions, especially as other streets would be closed because of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, when state leaders of Central Asian countries met with their Chinese hosts to discuss security and economic issues.

In addition to the monitoring flights, areas around schools were closed to traffic, according to a press release from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau yesterday.

Police also helped six students to get to the test, after anxious parents called to say they could not find a taxi. Police motorcycles were dispatched to send the candidates to the exam.