"He can't have climbed over this wall," shouted a muscular, young man holding a camera on his shoulder.

"Why not? The old fox looks as strong as you," retorted his companion.

Along with more than 30 other reporters from around China and the school-gate guards, the two journalists searched every corner of Zhonghua Middle School, but just couldn't find their prey.

They had waited three hours in the sunshine in this capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, where the outdoor temperature has rocketed to 38 degrees centigrade.

It was July 8, the second day of the three-day national college entrance examination. The reporters had seen their subject enter the school, one of the test venues, in the morning. But he never came out.

While the reporters where searching the school that afternoon their star was comfortably crouched in his air-conditioned house smiling.

No, this man is not James Bond, but Wang Xia, a 72-year-old Chinese man. Wang is one of 10 candidates aged over 60 taking this year's college entrance exam.

In April of this year the Education Ministry abolished its rules limiting college candidates. Previously candidates had to be unmarried and aged under 25.

Encouraged by the relaxation, Wang secretly registered for the exam on May 15, escaping the notice of his family, but was caught by dozens of reporters waiting for news at the registration office.

Unfortunately, the scores published last Thursday by the provincial education committee revealed that Wang Xia had failed his exam, with a total score of around 160.

He got around one fifth of the total 750 marks, with lower scores in mathematics, physics and biology, but good results in Chinese and English.

"So much new knowledge has been added since I first took the exam in my youth," said the old man. "Even the English has changed a lot."

But the 72-year-old's failure is not to be laughed at, he prepared very hard for the exam. Since he learned of the relaxation in the restrictions in April, he has locked himself in a small, stuffy room and studied from five in the morning to 10 at night.

And Wang is still sweating and doing his math homework.

"I study five hours everyday and am confident of success in next year's exam," he smiled.

Many people, including some of Wang's family members, see Wang's registering for the exam and his application to the Internal Medicine Department of Nanjing Medical University as a joke. "It will be ridiculous if he succeeds," they said.

"I have dreamed of going to college for half a century," Wang explained. "I know I may never succeed but I am happy to have another chance."

"I took the national college entrance examination five times in my youth, and passed it three times, but never managed to study on campus," he added.

A recount of the old man's life may help unravel and explain his 'ridiculous' university dream.

Born in January 1929, Wang was the fourth son of a cereal dealer in Nanjing. His sickly father dragged the family to rock bottom financially, and all his brothers and sisters had to drop out of school.

When Wang finally graduated from primary school, he seemed destined to become an assistant in his father's shabby rice shop, since the family could not pay the middle school tuition fees.

So Wang decided to apply to a public middle school, which charged no tuition. Of his 120 classmates he was the only lucky boy to be admitted.

On Wang's graduation from middle school in 1949, his father died. The family begged him to forget his education and go out and earn some money.

But the ambitious young man refused, "I want to go to college," he said with tears in his eyes.

He wanted to go to Peking University, one of the top universities in China.

Peking University only recruited three students from Nanjing in 1949, and Wang was confident of being one of them.

"The sudden disease that took me in the summer of 1949 seems so unfair," said the white-haired old man remembering.

Wang caught typhoid the week before the national college entrance exam.

Wang entered the examination hall with a high fever, and failed.

Having packed up his textbooks the young man became a worker at the local railway.

"I could only dream of the shining ripples on the lake at Peking University as I was adding coal to the fire," said Wang.

As a result Wang taught himself medicine, English and Latin at work.

Even today, at the age of 72, he can still recite Shakespeare sonnets and lines from Hamlet.

His hard work enabled him to get a different job in 1953, as a pharmacist at the Bengbu Railway Hospital in East China's Anhui Province.

With a salary of 53 yuan (about US$31 according to the exchange rate then) per month, Wang was financially independent and believed the time was ripe to chase his university dream.

He passed the national college entrance exam three times in 1954, 1955 and 1956, but his employers refused to release him for his higher education.

In 1960 Wang took part in the national exam once again, but this time no one told him his score.

As the years past the dreamer became the father of a boy and a girl.

In 1965 he was transferred to the Nanjing Railway Hospital, and worked as a junior physician until his retirement in 1986, kept in a low position because he didn't have a university degree.

Half a century has passed since Wang began his pursuit of his university dream in 1949. On the night the exam restrictions were relaxed in 2001, Wang learned of his new chance in the newspapers.

The youthful dreams, which so nearly died 40 years ago, woke up.

The old man bought a dozen different papers to check the news and read each one time and time again. Then he started reviewing the lessons he had learned 50 years.

"In my youth education was my only way of climbing the social ladder," said Wang. "But today I feel different towards my old dream. I just want to study."

Wang hopes to offer free medical services to his neighborhood and the surrounding rural areas if he graduates from college.

"I'm still very healthy and I can visit patients in need of my help," said Wang. "I want to be of some use in my old age."

Which is why Wang wouldn't enter a university established especially for senior citizens, he regards the arts courses offered at such institutions to be "of little use to others except myself."

Wang will compete with millions of teenagers in next year's exam. We wish him the best of luck.

(China Daily 07/30/2001)