Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 -- English Window to China News

STUDENTS in areas hardest hit by the May 12 earthquake began their three-day national college entrance exams yesterday, some weeks after the rest of the country.

One of the 120,000 was Huang Qian, 18, who wore jeans bought for her by her mother, who died in the quake that claimed nearly 70,000 lives. Huang looked a little nervous, but her teacher patted her on the shoulder before she entered the exam room in Chengdu.

"Relax, I'll wait for you outside. Don't forget to sign your name on the paper," the teacher said. The girl nodded and strode into the makeshift classroom where she had been studying for the past month.

The first exam was Chinese, and the composition title was "The Story I Most Want To Tell." Huang was in tears as she wrote. After the test, she explained that her essay was about her rescue from the quake.

Huang was one of 96,000 students from 45 counties in Sichuan Province and 24,000 from 17 counties in Gansu Province taking the belated test. The two groups comprise 1.1 percent of all senior high school graduates who took the college entrance exam this year.

About 78 percent are taking the most important exam of their lives in makeshift classrooms. Many are recovering from the biggest trauma of their lives and the deaths of relatives and friends.

Reports said about 7,000 students died in the disaster, many buried when school buildings collapsed.

In the Changhong Training Center venue in Mianyang City, Sichuan, 935 examinees from Beichuan County sat the exam.

"What they are faced with is not only the exam but dreadful memories of the earthquake," said a proctor surnamed Liu.

He and other proctors have been trained in evacuation procedures in the event of an aftershock.

Helicopters were used for the first time to take the exam papers to 13 test sites in Aba Prefecture, Sichuan, said Zhou Xinbin, an official with the provincial education and examination institute.

"Roads to these venues were either blocked or threatened by the earthquake, and we were afraid landslides and cave-ins could occur while transporting exam papers," Zhou said.

Four helicopters carried 4,000 sets of exam papers to these areas, with armed police guarding the papers.

Earthquake zones have been granted a college enrollment rate increased by 2 percent. The Ministry of Education has asked the country's 1,000-plus institutions of higher learning to increase their enrollment quota for quake-hit areas.