I left my office with one of my colleagues very late yesterday. It was valentine's day, of course, we talked about the feast day at first. Then, our topic changed to his high school life. He is from Shandong Province whose high school students' Gaokao(National College Entrance Examinations) mark is very high in China and now he have graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He said he was No.1 when he was high school student, but when he came to the university, he found that so many talent students in the university.
The students in his university class mostly were from Shanghai, he said, he lost his confidence as his classmates from shanghai could speak fluent English. Why? The answer is that students begin to learn English in the 1st grade in many shanghai elementary schools. I remember that I began to learn English when I was in the 1st grade in Junior Middle School. It means when I start my English learning, the students in Shanghai have already learn English for 6 years.
Now I know the reason why so many people come to Shanghai and want to get the Shanghai hukou
(the registered permanent residence). In fact, the city has many
priorities in China. Children grow up in Shanghai will have better
education than most other regions in China. About one-third of the
shanghai universities' (such as Fudan, SJTU) entrance quota are only for Shanghai students. Moreover, Shanghai has better medical and welfare system.
There is a very common phenomena in my hometown that many local
hospitals' ads always say that, " Our hospital has Shanghai experts".