The Big Examination (2022)

When it rains, it pours.

At first glance, this is a tribute drama with low audience appeal. The topic of gaokao 高考 or national college entrance exams is already stress inducing. Throw in the pandemic and the average viewer would head for the hills. I snuck a peek because I like to keep an eye on Rong Zishan's growth as an actor. To my surprise, I was hooked from the first episode of this uplifting story about the resilience of youth in the face of great challenges.

This drama is not about China's urban elite. It is set in Jinhe County, where most of the households are among the two thirds of Chinese households that are not part of the middle class. The pandemic disproportionately affected high school seniors from this class of Chinese society. Gaokao is a life changing rite of passage for them. All the hopes and dreams of their families are staked on their gaokao performance. With less resources and uneven access to the internet, online learning is less effective for many of them. The pandemic exacerbated the economic and social pressures these families were already experiencing. This drama offers some insight into why the Chinese leadership has clung to an extreme zero tolerance covid policy so different from the rest of the world.

The narrative focuses on five students of Jinhe County No 1 Middle School (Pan Xianxuan and Gao Mingyu) and Jinhe County No 4 Middle School (Zhou Bowen, Wu Jiajun and Tian Wenwen) and their principals Wang Benzhong and Shi Aihua. Because it is a small county, there are about three degrees of separation between the students, teachers, their families and the broader community. Bowen, Wenwen and Jiajun are fast friends at No 4 Middle School, where Bowen is the star pupil. He intensely disapproves of his deadbeat dad Zhao Meiren, who is charismatically portrayed by Wang Xiao. Wenwen is left to fend for herself after her grandmother passes away as her absentee parents run a business in Wuhan. And aspiring artist Jiajun suffers from the nightmare oversight of the ultimate tiger mom. They are part of an online student chat group with Pan Xianxuan and Gao Mingyu, students at the No 1 Middle School, which is a boarding school. My favorite character, Pan Xianxuan is a savvy and commercial doer who is not academic oriented. Despite his father's wealth, his is practically homeless as both his divorced parents have long moved on. And finally Gao Mingyu, the most impoverished and driven of them all whose only family is an ailing grandfather. They form a fast friendship and benefit from the care and affection of their principal Wang Benzhong, who is more like a surrogate parent to them both.

Every time I watch a drama with young actors matched up with veterans like Chen Baoguo, Wang Quanyuan and Wang Xiao,I am floored by the seamless and natural the performances all around. I feel fear for the current generation of popular actors whose flaws only become more obvious when they act across veterans because the next generation is growing up fast and there are lots of them. This cast made me invested in their stories from the get go and sharked me into enthusiastically watching a flag waving, sappy, inspirational story, the kind that I have a very small yearly quota for. The message of the story is very clear - often in life, when it rains, it pours but it is in times of hardship that we find our best selves.

While this story does carry some powerful and moving coming of age messages beyond surviving a pandemic, what I didn't like is it is a bit too good to be true. The pandemic turns every flawed character into a better version of themselves. The strong sense of community and the dedication and fighting spirit of parents and teachers can prevail over an amorphous enemy and natural disasters alike. Most of all, the pandemic didn't seem as isolating and as disruptive as it probably was and the government's pandemic control measures are portrayed as very mild. To be fair, this is not set in a densely populated community and it is during the first 200 days of 2020, during which China had effectively contained the outbreak to Wuhan. Nonetheless,, I feel there is a bit too much sugar coating and white washing in this drama that avoids the uglier, more realistic aspects of the pandemic and China's response to it. It also loses focus at times as a result of trying to acknowledge too many every day heroes from educators to health workers.

For a flag waving drama, this is a surprisingly good watch and the propaganda aspects are non intrusive. The youth aspects are well written and wonderfully portrayed. I am happy to rate this a very solid 7.5.

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Never did I expect to absolutely LOVE a high school entrance exam-centered story.

Though not Chinese, as a fellow Asian who has went through the very similar, absolutely gruelling exam system, watching Asian high school dramas are next to impossible for me, it's almost like ptsd haha
If not for the cast members whom I absolutely love, and the premise of "how China held the exam in the midst of the pandemic" that intrigued me, I wouldn’t have pressed play. And I'm so glad I did.
IT'S SO RELATABLE IN THE BESTEST WAY POSSIBLE!!!!!

I laughed and cried with all the characters. I loved all of them. Even the flawed ones. The acting and character writing is so nuanced and realistic, the adults love for the children was almost palpable through the screen, though some of them might not have chosen the best way to show it, it was so obvious how much they were trying, and how much they cared. Which made me as a viewer care for them too and cheer wholeheartedly for their growth.
Gosh, the drama drew humor from the most mundane, everyday things, was highly empathetic and non judgemental, and was inspiring. It made me nostalgic about that era of my life, it made revisit and reassess my family values.
"This is how much my parents love me", I thought as I watched it. "My teachers were dedicated to us just like this".
It is a drama that actively made me proud to be an Asian.

So watch it, everyone! I know the subs are bad, but they are not impossible to get through with some context based guesswork. It's worth it, if you are interested in any of the things I mentioned above! ❤

P.s.-

**Mild spoiler for the last "challenge" in the story which happened in the final 4 eps**
This drama took the relatability to a new level when they did that last arc (flood), since that happened in my country as well, and under exact same context. I was bamboozled lol

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