CHINA: Chinese students are resorting to clever subterfuge to get through this month's highly stressful university entrance exams, such as getting an accomplice to check the textbook outside, while you ask the questions into a microphone in your sleeve and receive the answers in a wireless earphone.
It's a high-tech, but fairly straightforward, way of cogging the tests, but cheats have run into a few technical hitches along the way. In the central city of Wuhan, one student used a "microearphone" just three millimetres in diameter, which slipped into his aural canal and perforated his eardrum, the China Daily newspaper reported.
Another student needed an operation to have the earphones removed, and in another case, a student who had strapped an electronic device to his body was taken to hospital after it exploded.
With 9.5 million aspiring students battling it out for 2.6 million places, many are prepared to take the risk, given the hugely competitive environment.
In one exam hall in the city, examiners found more than 100 devices to help the students cheat, including more traditional cheating tools like laptops and mobile phones, as well as tiny transmitting devices hidden in vests, wallets and the waistbands of trousers. Some universities have installed cameras and mobile-phone blocking technology at exam halls to stop people using technology to cheat.
Education is a highly competitive business in China and most students agree the English exam is the most important test they have to face as it is used by employers to gauge their language proficiency, making it the one most prone to cheating.
Police are also investigating reports that some of the questions in the test may have been leaked in advance.
In northwest China's Shaanxi Province, a school principal and deputy were punished for fraud following this year's college entrance exam, after four students were caught taking the exams for other students.
Exam time is a stressful time for any child, but after more than 30 years of the One Child Policy, many of these students are only children, who have an extra burden of expectation to bear.
In Shanghai earlier this year, a teenager committed suicide after she was barred from an exam for not tying her hair back.
It's not just the students getting stressed out either. Outside the exam halls, parents can be seen stopping traffic or remonstrating with taxi drivers using their horns, ensuring their offspring are not disturbed during the tests.
Construction sites are barred from operating at night in residential areas to make sure the students get a good night's sleep.