China Books, an imprint of Sinomedia International Group, will publish "Gaokao: A Personal Journey Behind China's Examination Culture" in May 2014.
Tiger Mother and Wolf Father both grabbed headlines in the West for their untraditional, and often criticized, approach to parenting. The subsequent media frenzy surrounding these figures and the ideas they espoused, however, largely overlooked the very voices and opinions of the children in question. Now 17 years old Yanna Gong, in her book "Gaokao: A Personal Journey Behind China's Examination Culture," will address the phenomenon of the Tiger Mother and Wolf Father in the context of the Gaokao. The Gaokao, China's brutal college entrance examination, rolls AP classes, SAT tests and college essays and applications into one exhausting three day long experience that decides where almost 10 million Chinese students attend college each year. Gong writes "For me, this book is not just an academic investigation into the Chinese educational system-it is personal. It helped me understand why my brother and I were raised the way we were, and enabled me to glimpse the cultural forces that shaped my parents' approach to the world." Through extensive research, first hand interviews and her own personal experience growing up in a Chinese household in Minnesota, Gong will seek to show readers the repercussions of the national obsession that has become the Gaokao and why it remains so important in China today.Videos