56-year-old Chinese millionaire fails country’s dreaded college entry exam for 27th time

‘It’s hard to say whether I will keep on preparing for the gaokao next year’

Liang Shi going through exam papers ahead of the exam in Chengdu, in China’s southwestern Sichuan province (Courtesy of Liang Shi/AFP via Ge)

A 56-year-old millionaire has failed to clear China's gruelling college entrance exam for the 27th time despite putting in hours of hard work and living the life of an “ascetic monk”.

Liang Shi, a self-made millionaire, competed with nearly 13 million high school seniors who took the exam this year, with the hope of earning a spot at top-tier Sichuan University.

Over the past four decades, Mr Liang, a Sichuan native has taken the "gao kao" over two dozen times in order to earn the status of an "intellectual".

“It’s an uncomfortable thought that I didn’t manage to get a college education,” Mr Liang told news agency AFP.

Mr Liang has worked his way up from a menial job on a factory floor to establishing his own construction materials business, but this one dream remains elusive.

Gao kao or the national college entrance exam is an annual admission test that final year high school students take in order to secure a spot at the university.

The process is reportedly so intense that police officers are often deployed to clear the road to make sure students are able to reach the examination centres.

The gao kao, considered one of the world's toughest exams, tests students on core subjects such as Chinese and English languages and mathematics as well as other science or humanities subjects of their choice.

The maximum score is 750, while students are required to receive more than 600 points to secure a place at top universities. This year, a record 13 million students participated in the entrance exam that took place earlier in June.

Mr Liang took the exam for the first time in 1983 at the age of 16. He continued trying to clear the exam for the next decade until he had to give up due to age restrictions in 1992.

But once the age limit was lifted in 2001, Mr Liang began retaking the exams. He persisted for another 16 times even during the harsh Covid-19 lockdowns in China.

While the local media mocked him as the "gaokao holdout", Mr Liang stood his ground.

This year, despite putting in 12-hour study days, abstaining from drinking and playing mahjong, he failed.

Mr Liang said he was 34 points short of the provincial baseline for getting into any university.

"Before I got the result, I had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to get a high enough score to enter an elite university," he told AFP.

"But I didn't expect to not make it into the ordinary ones."

However, Mr Liang has began wondering if his hard work will ever earn him a college seat.

"If I truly can't see much hope for improvement, there is no point doing it again. I really did work very hard every day," he said.

"It's hard to say whether I will keep on preparing for the gao kao next year," he admitted.

"It's a hard decision to make. I am not willing to give up either.

"(If I were to) stop taking the gaokao, every cup of tea I drank for the rest of my life would taste of regret."