Front Page of the Day

Your guide to the gaokao

Pengcheng Daily (彭城晚报) is a commercial evening newspaper run by the Xuzhou Daily. As in other cities with a long and glorious history (6,000 years, in this case), the paper uses an older name of the city of Xuzhou in its title. The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, written in the Song Dynasty, notes, "Pengzu, Zhuan Xu's great-great-grandson, reached the age of 767 at the end of the Shang Dynasty. His tomb still exists today. Hence the city is called Peng City" (Baidupedia link).

With just two days left before the gaokao, the college entrance exams, today's top headline reflects the anxiety that students and their parents are feeling over this critical event:

Last-Minute Guide to 2008 Gaokao Issued

In the final two days, take time to do some practice questions, review your practice tests, and take a walk around the test site

Nutritionist sets out an "exam menu" for test-takers

Arrange transportation, room, and board for those days before-hand

During the exam, attention to detail and mastery of tricks can earn points

Today is World Environment Day (was anyone aware of this?) and to commemorate the occasion, the city of Xuzhou conducted a "health checkup, the results of which were announced yesterday. A gorgeous photo of the city as seen across scenic Yunlong Lake is captioned: "The sky is bluer, the water is clearer, and the city is more beautiful."

We may not have any of that here in Beijing, but we do have our own edition of the Pengcheng Daily: the front-page layout, color scheme, and type design of the newspaper are suspiciously similar to those of The Beijing News.

The logos even resemble each other, too. The logo of The Beijing News is a flame rising from a white Great Wall beacon tower set inside a red circle. Below it is the paper's current motto: "Quality is rooted in responsibility" (品质源于责任). Pengcheng Daily's motto is "Setting the pace for new life" (领跑新生活), and it sits under the initials "PW" inscribed onto a red circle whose bottom half is a splash of white.

The Pengcheng Daily's PDF archives do not go back far enough to determine which paper's the original and which is the plagiarist, but the first issue of The Beijing News, with the logo set above the nameplate, hints at an answer.

 
There are currently 1 Comments for Your guide to the gaokao.

Comments on Your guide to the gaokao

Re:World Environment Day
Yes, I have noticed that there are new bins put along the street in Zhongguancun. I said to myself, after all this years, finally we get to recycle things, hopefully this is not just a show for Olympics. Unfortunately there is no recycle system in the building we lived, not sure how is the situation in other buildings. In my opinion, recycle household waste should be a priority, I miss those big bins in Australia : (

Post a comment

All comments are moderated and subject to review by Danwei contributors and editors, but well-grounded and articulate comments will be published regardless of which way they lean. Because comments published on any website ultimately contribute to the character of that website, we may decline to publish comments that are irrelevant, redundant, or that do not adhere to generally accepted standards of courtesy; if you are looking for a fight, there are plenty of other venues available online.


Some useful html: <b>bold</b>, <i>italic</i>,
<a href="http://www.danwei.org">link</a>

Danwei Model Workers
laomo2008fpA.jpg
Recommended blogs and new media
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Books on China
Leslie_Chang_Factory_Girls_s.jpg
To die poor is a sin: An excerpt of Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang.
In Wang Shuo's No Man's Land: Geremie Barme addresses Wang Shuo's 千万别把我当人.
Swimming with Mao, a memoir essay: This memoir piece is by Xujun Eberlein, author of the new short story book Apologies Forthcoming'.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ Test Questions (2005.06): Test questions from the 2005 gaokao.
+ Yu Qiuyu on the hardships of reading (2007.07): Yu Qiuyu (余秋雨) writes about trunks of books.
+ Stifled Laughter: How the Communist Party Killed Chinese Humor (2004.11): The Chinese government has systematically stifled crosstalk by bowdlerizing its tradition, restricting its natural growth and evolution, and reducing the form to a sycophantic, unsatisfying -- and unfunny -- shadow of its former self.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky rsschiclet2.png (on the mainland)
or Feedburner rsschiclet.gif (blocked in China)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Main posts: All main page posts
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Top Links: Links from the top bar
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Jobs: Want ads
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30