CANVAS CLASSROOM: High school students at Lixian Middle School have class in tents. Because of the earthquake, some students are being allowed to take the National University Entrance Exam at a later date this year

At 5 p.m. on June 8, a crowd of adults waited quietly and eagerly at the gate of No. 2 Middle School in Fuzhou City, capital of Fujian Province in southern China. They were the parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and other family members of students taking the National University Entrance Exam.

The crowd became suddenly animated as the last session of the exam ended and exhausted students filed out of the classrooms. Cameras began flashing, flowers were presented and in some cases, tears of relief were shed.

Each summer, middle school students in China aspiring to enter universities are grilled during a national college entrance exam. For several decades, the exam has been the single most important test in determining the fate of a person. The exam also draws enormous public attention.

University admission rates in China used to be low. Although enrollment has been expanded significantly in recent years, famous universities are still highly competitive. On June 6, the Ministry of Education announced that in 2008, 10.5 million students enrolled for the exam, the largest number ever. The admission rate this year is 57 percent, 4 percent up from the previous year.

A family affair

Parents often place great pressure on their children to pass the exam, acting as coaches and cheerleaders while they study and showering them with affection when it's complete.

While some parents raised cameras to capture the decisive moment in their children's lives, others had gone much further. Fifteen minutes before the end of the important exam in the coastal city Dalian, in northeast China, a father suddenly hit upon the idea to give his son a pleasant surprise. He dashed to a flower shop, grabbed a bunch of fresh flowers, and on his way back to the campus where his son was taking the exam, weaved the flowers into a garland. Arriving back just in time to see his son walk out of the classroom, the father jostled through the crowd and put the garland around his neck.

Not every student wanted his or her parents to be around during the exam. Li Xiaoxin's daughter insisted that her parents stay away from the exam hall, because it would make her nervous if they came. She left for the exam with friends that morning, but her agitated parents couldn't stay away and came to the test center to meet her as she left on the afternoon of June 7.

The pressure on students was so great that some collapsed. Twenty minutes after the start of the first session of the exam, a student named Chen Li from Beijing No. 7 Middle School began to experience difficult breathing and suffered heart palpitations. He sweated heavily and groaned with pain. Chen was taken to a clinic, but still had his eyes on the time, trembling and murmuring, "Time is running out. I'm scared there won't be time for me to finish."