For those who can pass the college entrance exam, it's an admission ticket to higher education. But failure can be a terrible setback after years of hard work.

This cycle of failure and success has influenced generations of Chinese students for more than three decades. Wang Xiqing takes a closer look at what the exams have meant for China's youth over the years.

The college exams were a history-making event in 1977, as this was the first such examination after the Cultural Revolution.

The whole nation was galvanized, and people started to dust off their textbooks and worked enthusiastically to refresh their memories of education.

1977 college entrance examinee Jing Jifu said, "I remember we all scrambled for lectures and textbooks. The classrooms were filled with people. It was so crowded I couldn't hear or see. I also shared one textbook with others, and read it overnight without sleep."

There was no limit on the age and educational background of examinees. The youngest were in their early teens the oldest in their late thirties. The test papers were designed by individual provinces, and the admission rate was only 2 percent.

Jing Jifu said, "For my generation, college education could change your life. Once you were enrolled, you were no longer registered as a farmer on your residence paper. You could eat well and dress well. "

Starting from 1979, the examination was uniformly designed by the Ministry of Education, which meant all the students took the exact same tests. People born in the sixties became the main group of participants.