Welcome to the city where 20,000 students study seven days a week

Brook Larmer goes inside the Chinese town where 20,000 students spend seven days a week studying for the biggest test of their lives

THE main street of Maotanchang, a secluded town in the furrowed hills of eastern China’s Anhui province, was nearly deserted. A man dozed on a motorised rickshaw, and two old women with hoes shuffled toward the rice paddies outside town.

It was 11:44am on a Sunday last spring, and the shops selling food, tea and books by the pound had no customers. Even the town’s sacred tree lured no supplicants; beneath its broad limbs, a single bundle of incense smouldered on a pile of ash.