It has been 47 years since the college entrance examination was restored in December 1977. I found the college entrance examination papers from Sichuan back then, feeling like cultural relics. The literature and science subjects all had the same papers; liberal arts selected history and geography, while science selected physics and chemistry, and there was no foreign language test. I took the liberal arts exam.
If this set of exam papers were given to current middle school students, it would be extremely easy. However, from 1966 to 1979, students basically did not study. From the political, Chinese, and history papers, it can be seen that most of the content tested was political, memorizing Mao's quotes and poetry. Math and geography, physics, and chemistry were relatively unimpacted by politics. Even so, many scored a few points or even 0 in math. The total score was 400, and the admission line was around 190 points.
At that time, 14 grades of students nationwide participated in the college entrance examination, with 200,000 students admitted to universities. Later, an additional 70,000 were admitted, totaling 270,000. Although the exam questions were simple and the admission line was low, those who could pass were usually avid readers, as there was less than two months from the time it was known that they could take the college entrance examination to the actual exam.
For a full 12 years, countless young people were abandoned and wasted, living with regrets and sadness into their old age.
In December 1977, I was a young educated youth in the countryside, and I got into college through these exam papers. In the first batch of my county, only 11 people were admitted, and not a single candidate from my county passed, which shows how poor the education level was at that time.
I remember history very clearly, especially the fourth question in the first part, which clearly asked about the Three Kingdoms period. Our production team's educated youth answered all sorts of things, mentioning Li Hongzhang, Zheng He, and even Jiang Jieshi 😄 I got points for that question.
In the geography section, there was a question explaining stars and planets. A fellow educated youth from my exam room came out and said her answer was: 'The sun revolves around the star, and the moon revolves around the planet.' I laughed so hard that tears came out.
There were many jokes during the exam back then, such as the reason for the failure of the Paris Commune? Answer: Because there was no agricultural study in Dazhai. In a vocational political exam, there was a question to fill in the names of the country's zx and deputy zx. A Yi ethnic candidate from Liangshan, Sichuan wrote a name 'Digging Things', referring to: 'Wang Dongxing'. He actually answered correctly; he knew who it was. It seems he is someone who cares about national affairs and listens to the radio, just didn't know how to write the name 😄
Source: Feng Li, Bahu II