For Sheer Perseverance,

Liang Shi deserves a medal!

photograph Shanghai Daily, since he was a teenager Liang Shi wanted to go to Sichuan University, he is the owner of a successful building materials company in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China’s Sichuan province, and has for the past few years been taking the incredibly tough gaokao university entrance exam, “I just turned 55, and I’m still young,” Liang recently said. “And I am having no trouble learning history and geography so far. If I can get into a school that I like, I’ll end this gaokao ‘Long March’ and go to school. Otherwise, I will continue to take the gaokao until it becomes obvious that my dream cannot be realized.”

Liang Shi has been taking the gaokao exam since 1983, and only skipped it 14 times since, either due to work responsibilities or policies that have since been lifted, like being unmarried and under 25years of age. His best score ever was just over 400 out of 750 possible points, which would have granted him admission to a second-tier university, but not to his dream school, Sichuan University, so how many times has he tried? After failing to complete the science comprehension part of the gaokao exam, which is required for science students, 25 times, Liang switched to art and human sciences this year, hoping to finally get into Sichuan University. People are skeptical though and have told him that his “failing memory” at 55 will hold him back from memorizing textbooks, “I simply take people’s skepticism as motivation and use my test results to prove them wrong,” Liang Shi said, adding that his strong desire to enter his dream school has kept him coming back to take the exam year after year, well maybe this time it will be 26th time lucky!