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Superstitious Chinese mothers dress for success as students toil over college entrance exam

BEIJING — As millions of Chinese high school students sweated through the first day of their university entrance exams on Friday (June 7), superstitious mothers across the country used every trick in the book to convince the gods of good fortune to look favourably on their loved ones.

Many Chinese parents believe that wearing certain clothes can help their children do well in the college entrance exam.

Many Chinese parents believe that wearing certain clothes can help their children do well in the college entrance exam.

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BEIJING — As millions of Chinese high school students sweated through the first day of their university entrance exams on Friday (June 7), superstitious mothers across the country used every trick in the book to convince the gods of good fortune to look favourably on their loved ones.

For the fashion-conscious parent, few things are more effective at winning over Lady Luck than the traditional Chinese dress known as the qipao, and there were plenty on show outside a test centre in Beijing’s Chaoyang district.

The perceived wisdom is that wearing such a dress with slits up the sides is bound to bring good fortune as its name in Mandarin – qipao kai cha – sounds a lot like the phrase for “success at the first attempt”, or qi kai de she ng.

“I only heard about this a week ago so I hurried to buy one,” said a woman called Ms Chen outside the test centre where her 18-year-old daughter was taking the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, or gaokao. “My daughter had a good laugh about it but I’m serious,” she said. “This is the least I can do.”

Whether Ms Chen’s sartorial selection does anything to boost her daughter’s exam score remains to be seen, but there is no doubting the benefit of the fashion trend for retailers.

Ms Zhu Jing, who owns an online dress shop based in Shanghai, said that sales of qipao had gone through the roof in the run up to the exam, hitting 400 on Saturday alone, or more than four times her usual turnover.

There had also been a spike in the number of purchases by women old enough to have teenage children, she said.

“There was a sudden change in the age of my clients, from women in their 20s to women in their 40s. And some customers who chatted with us online said they were buying the qipao for the gaokao.”

As for the colour of the dresses, Ms Zhu said that red – traditionally associated with good fortune in China – remained popular, along with green (because of its association with “go” in English), and a combination of grey and yellow, the words for which sounded like “splendid” in Mandarin.

“But the most popular of all was a dress with a golden [yellow] lining and red roses,” she said.

While superstitious fathers of exam-takers have fewer fashion choices, those seeking to sway the gods of good fortune are not entirely without options.

While it lacks the elegance of a silk qipao, one of the top choices for doting dads is the simple waistcoat, or ma jia in Mandarin, as it shares the same first character as the Chinese phrase for “success on arrival”, or ma dao cheng gong.

Last year, the staff of a school in east China’s Jiangsu province were so determined to load the dice in their students’ favour that all of the women teachers wore qipao and all the men donned red waistcoats on examination day.

For those who prefer to tempt fate in a more graphic way, T-shirts and trainers made by Nike have in recent years become the essential garb for test-takers because of the resemblance between the company’s “swoosh” logo and the universal symbol of success, the tick.

A more contemporary craze among parents has been the use of sunflowers as a good-luck charm.

In Mandarin, they are known as xiang ri kui or kui hua, and when coupled with the characters for “to hold” – yi ju – the resulting phrase sounds a little like the Chinese for “to achieve first place”.

A florist in Chaoyang, who asked not to be named, said the floral trend had been good for business.

“It started online several years ago and many parents started believing in it,” she said. “I now have quite a few clients that order sunflowers every year around this time.”

Another long-standing superstition based on homophones is the tradition in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces of giving students rice cakes – gao zong – to eat before they sit the test as the name of the snack sounds like the Chinese phrase for “passing with flying colours”.

Cruising to success in the gaokao is certainly the aim of the teachers and management staff at Maotanchang Middle School in Liuan, south-east China’s Anhui province, where every year more than 10,000 students are drilled military style in how to pass the gruelling exam.

While the school is best known for its tough academic programme – some people have dubbed it a gaokao mill – it also leaves no stone unturned when it comes to the use of lucky charms and traditions.

For instance, all of the coaches used to ferry students to the test centres must have the sequence “666” in their licence plates. Despite the number’s beastly connotation for Christians, in Chinese it means “smooth”, as in a smooth ride.

The number plate of this year’s most popular coach reads “91666”, the Chinese for which sounds like “[I] just want everything to go well”, according to a report by Pear Video. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

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