National Higher Education Entrance Examination
After his high school graduation, Chaoke spent some years as a herder; he then became part of the "Class of 1978" (those who took the first offering of the National Higher Education Entrance Examination after it was reinstated that year) and with his results attained admission to the Central University for Nationalities (Minzu University of China) Department of Linguistics. He wrote his senior thesis on the structure of the Evenki language.