The adult college entrance exam—chengkao—matters to me for a very practical reason: work. I wish I had taken it while I was still in college and saved myself the hassle, but nobody plans that far ahead.
This year the timing was bad. Gansu was in the middle of a serious Covid outbreak. I kept wondering whether the exam would be postponed, and then I realized I was probably overthinking it: chengkao is a national unified exam, after all. The night before, I went to Baiyin and checked into a hotel I had booked through Meituan. Only at the front desk did I learn that I needed a 24-hour nucleic acid test report. I froze. I had taken a test on the evening of the 20th, and the result still had not come out. What was I supposed to do?
The front desk staff were polite, but that did not solve my problem: I had nowhere to stay. It was late. I considered sleeping in the car. That was not the end of the world, but I was mainly worried about getting into the exam site the next day, since that also required a test report. I thought about going to the site to see if the exam staff could suggest something, but when even the hotel would not let me stay, I felt numb. I asked the teacher handling my enrollment. He was confused too and asked whether it was a 48-hour test. I did not even want to keep talking to him. Other enrollment teachers had set up group chats where people could share updates and ask questions; mine only did one-on-one messages. I seriously began to suspect he was a subcontractor of a subcontractor.
I waited at the hotel entrance for more than half an hour and then contacted the health center back home. The woman there told me the result should be out. I did not know what to say. Then she sent me a screenshot from the system. It really was out. But my phone showed nothing—no nucleic acid message at all. The result only appeared in the State Council government services mini-program, and for some reason mine was not displaying. Anyway, I was very grateful to her; without that, I would have had nowhere to go that night.
Later that evening I saw a blog post saying that the Baiyin test site was collecting samples that night, with results ready the next morning, because entry to the exam required a test. I had already gone to bed, but I got up and rushed over to take one. I messaged my enrollment teacher and got no reply. I was speechless. How could he not know something this important? If I had not seen that blog post, I would not have been able to get into the exam site today.
Now the more I look at that teacher, the less I can stand him. I even want to do enrollment work part-time; at least I would be responsible. This teacher gave me no information at all, only saying that if I had no test report I could not get into the site, so there was nothing to be done. That is not responsible at all. In my exam room today, 13 people showed up. The rest either did not want to come or were not allowed in without a nucleic acid test. Lanzhou's outbreak was more serious, so probably many people there did not make it.