School resorts to lottery for VIP study lounges

A student shows her seat card in the library in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan province, Feb 24, 2014. The library provides three rooms for students who prepare to take postgraduate examinations. The seats of the rooms are distributed to colleges based on their needs. Students can get a seat through seat card lottery or sharing a seat with others. The new way of seat assignment saves students' time and reduces the uncouth behavior. (Xinhua/Li Ga)

A university in Changsha, Hunan province has started a lottery-style draw for 'VIP study lounges' to deal with the high demand from students preparing for the national postgraduate entrance exams.

Library employees at Hunan Normal University (HNU) announced the drawing for three study rooms on February 14, which would entitle the winner to a year-long room reservation.

"It's a pity I didn't win a seat," said Xiao Fei (psuedonym), a junior at the university's School of Life Sciences. "It's so inconvenient to study in classrooms. [Students] have to move their piles of books every time the room is used for a class."

According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, 1.72 million people nationwide took the national postgraduate entrance exams in January, with 67,504 in Hunan province alone.

With the limited resources and large student bodies at most Chinese colleges, finding an available seat in a quiet library can be a struggle.

Students going to extremes for a study seat are commonplace in China, such as when students at Sichuan Normal University, in a rush for a place to sit down, broke down their library's glass doors on December 16, 2013.