Anhui examinee Xu Mengnan, who once scored zero in college entrance exam, is taking the exam again this year. On June 7th, “What did zero-score examinee Xu Mengnan write in his essay” became a hot search topic.
June 7th, 2024 marked the beginning of the National College Entrance Examination in mainland China, and this year is also the year when Anhui Province is implementing comprehensive reform in the exam, with a total of 495,000 students in the province taking the new “first exam” from June 7th to 9th.
Xu Mengnan, who previously scored zero in the college entrance exam, returned to take the exam this year.
After the language test on June 7th, Xu Mengnan posted a video saying that the essay topic was artificial intelligence. He said his writing went smoothly and conservatively estimated that he could score above 110 points.
In 2024, Anhui Province implemented the “3+1+2” model for the general college entrance exam. In this model, “3” stands for the unified exam subjects – language, mathematics, and a foreign language (including English, Russian, Japanese, French, German, Spanish) using the national exam papers set by the Ministry of Education. “1” is the preferred subject, where students choose between history and physics. “2” refers to the additional subjects where students select two out of the four subjects: political ideology, geography, chemistry, and biology. The selection of these subjects is set by Anhui Province.
Xu Mengnan was born in 1989 in a village on the outskirts of Mengcheng County in Bozhou, Anhui, about 4 kilometers away from the county seat.
Growing up in a family with one sister and two brothers, Xu Mengnan’s parents worked outside the hometown, and he was raised by his grandparents. Among the four children, his siblings dropped out of school early, except Xu Mengnan, who excelled academically, progressing from village school to town junior high and finally entering the second-best high school in the county.
At that time, Mengcheng was a nationally impoverished county, and Xu Mengnan had never been out of the county before the college entrance exam. He remembered the roads in the county town being mostly dusty, bumpy dirt roads whenever vehicles passed by.
In 2008, 19-year-old Xu Mengnan took the college entrance exam for the first time but instead of answering correctly, he wrote his “educational manifesto” on the exam paper, earning him a zero score.
Subsequently, he began a long period of labor in factories in Shanghai and Zhejiang. This June, in the first year of the new exam policy in Anhui Province, he returned to the exam hall once again.
Xu Mengnan, born in 1989 in a rural family in Bozhou, Anhui, with a total of four children, education became the most important choice for their future success.
“I was introverted as a child, but until high school, my academic performance was good, consistently ranking in the middle to upper level of the class,” Xu Mengnan told reporters. “After entering high school, I started to read books about educational system reform and became dissatisfied with the exam system, becoming more rebellious.”
In June 2008, he filled the exam paper with his understanding of education, expressing strong desires for educational reform. Trying to draw attention with a zero-score paper, he only received a total of 143 points.
Xu Mengnan once said to the media that he planned for two years to use the exam as a platform to promote his educational philosophy, even considering giving up the exam but failed to get the desired promotion for his ideas.
Subsequently, Xu Mengnan worked in factories, got married, had children, temporarily shelving the idea of further education.
After divorcing his wife in 2017 and saving money, Xu Mengnan, now 28, rekindled his determination to return to school. “I suddenly realized my passion for campus life and decided to retake the exam.”
In 2018, 28-year-old Xu Mengnan, through hard work, was accepted into a vocational college in Anhui, majoring in journalism. He later passed the upgrade exam to enter the Journalism program at Anhui Institute of Art and graduated in 2023.
In school, Xu Mengnan excelled in his studies and quickly became a role model for his classmates.
Xu Mengnan avoids discussing his zero-score exam with classmates. While making money through cartoon videos to support his family, he diligently completed his studies. “Looking back on my 35 years of life, the 5 years in college were the happiest for me. I felt like I found myself again.”
When asked by the media why he retook this year’s college entrance exam, Xu Mengnan said it was to experience it for himself. Additionally, with a bachelor’s degree and his age, the significance of this academic achievement is not considerable for him.