Their children were among those racking their brains over tests which have become a national obsession. For three days each year, the Chinese press clings minutely to the trials and tribulations of the country's educational elite. Public concern All construction sites near the exam venues must stop work completely and those in residential areas have to close at night, to help students rest. Tales of public concern fill the media - like the Beijing traffic policeman who rescued a teenage boy from his mother's car, stuck in one of the city's notorious traffic jams, and whisked him to the exam hall on his motorbike. For the families of the hopefuls it is a tense period.
Some hotels offer special room rates for parents and children seeking peace and quiet.
At least one Beijing branch of Mcdonald's stayed open late to let revising students pore over their books in the cool of its air conditioning. In the exam rooms themselves, students are often lucky to have an electric fan against the summer heat, and medical teams stand by in case the temperatures and the nerves become too much. So the rains on exam day came as a relief and did little to deter the parents gathered outside the school. I though it was meant to be creative writing, not science fiction. There were many similarly anguished looks.