Intellectual Youth 

In Cui Weiping's day, university was just a dream for most people.

One of the 17 million urban "intellectual youth" sent into the countryside to learn from the proletariat, Cui spent three years after high school farming in coastal Jiangsu.

Mao broke up the university entrance exams in 1966, saying the education system was dominated by the exploiting class.

Universities resumed partial recruitment in 1970, but only workers, farmers and soldiers were eligible through "recommendations" that emphasised revolutionary credentials.

Cui had welcomed hard labour in a bid for such a nomination.

"I was a good hand in the cotton fields at anything from sowing and weeding to spraying pesticides and harvesting," Cui recalled proudly.

These days she is more renowned for her translation of former Czech President Vaclav Havel's works on post-authoritarianism.

The restoration of gaokao in Late 1977 was an important aspect of the reconstruction of a society devastated by political turmoil and anti-intellectualism, said Yang, the education expert.

"It reaffirmed the dignity of knowledge and education, something that is merely commonsense but that had been denied in a radical way," Yang said.

It was also significant in giving equal education rights back to groups that were once ostracized, he added.

Lai studied 13 hours a day in her last year of high school preparing for the exams, spending less than 3 yuan (40 cents) a day on food to save money.

"I would have ended up in a Guangdong factory if I didn't make it," the soft-spoken Lai said.

Guangdong is the booming southern province where the bulk of teenagers in Lai's hometown, including her brother, join the ranks of 20 million migrant peasant workers after middle school or even elementary school.

But for Lai, success in the gaokao meant a different future.

At her northwestern Beijing campus, where students mill around in trendy clothes and iPods in their ears, slightly built Lai wore a plain T-shirt and jeans. Three years of urban life have failed to lighten her sun-tanned skin, the mark of her rural upbringing.

Almost out of habit, she keeps her daily food budget under 7 yuan (90 cents), even though her annual tuition of 6,000 yuan is covered by government loans.

When she returns home for the Lunar New Year holiday, she gathers with her childhood playmates, now manual labourers in the factories of Guangdong, but their different paths through life have set the once close friends apart.

"I dare not talk about my college life," Lai said. "I just tell some jokes to avoid the awkwardness."

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