A 36-year-old man has become known as “China’s Most Persistent Man” after taking the national college entrance exam for 16 years in a row to gain admission to the prestigious Tsinghua University.
Tang Shangjun took the Gaokao exam, China’s notorious and difficult college entrance exam, in 2009. He scored a mediocre 372 out of 750, far too low to get into his dream college, Tsinghua University. Unwilling to compromise, he spent the next few years studying harder and taking the Gaokao exam.
By 2016, his score improved to a respectable 625 points, more than enough to secure admission to several universities in his home province of Guanxi, but still not good enough for his chosen field of study at Tsinghua. So he continued year after year, ignoring all other universities, but never quite reaching the level required to get into his desired faculties at Tsinghua University.
In 2019, Tang achieved his peak Gaokao score of 649 out of 750 points, enough to get into many prestigious Chinese universities, even Tsinghua University, but not in the two subjects he aimed for, physics and chemistry. Most people would have settled for the many other options, but not “China’s Most Persistent Man.” His goal was Tsinghua University, and he would not settle for anything else.
Unfortunately, Tang Shangjun’s Gaokao scores deteriorated in the following years. Some speculated that it was because of his age, that his memory was no longer quite as good, while others suggested that the 649-point score was his peak and he simply could not score higher. Last year, Tang finally decided to study physics and chemistry at Central China Normal University, but he only scored 594 out of 750, and those courses were filled with applicants who scored at least 608. He ranked 6,000th out of about 460,000 Gaokao participants in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Tang Shangjun told China Daily that last year’s Gaokao was his last, but he seems to have overcome his disappointment, as this year he took the university entrance exam for the 16th time. He again scored over 600 but was unable to realize his dream of studying physics or chemistry at China’s most prestigious university. Now, at the age of 36, he is beginning to realize that his chances of finding a good job after graduation are slim, as he will have to compete with young people in their early 20s.
“He believes that getting into the country’s most prestigious university and opening up a good life for himself is a great achievement, but in life, there are many ways to succeed,” the director of China’s 21st Century Education Research Institute commented on Tang’s situation. “Doggedly pursuing a goal that is beyond one’s abilities sometimes leads to failure.”
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