A 36-year-old man has become known as “China’s most stubborn man” after taking the national college admission exam 16 consecutive years in an attempt to get accepted to the prestigious Tsinghua University.

Tang Shangjun took the gaokao, China’s notoriously difficult college admission exam, in 2009. He scored a mediocre 372 points out of 750, much too low to get into his dream school, Tsinghua University. He was unwilling to compromise, so he spent the next few years studying harder and taking the gaokao. By 2016, his score had improved to a respectable 625 points, more than enough to secure admission to several universities in his home province of Guanxi, but still not good enough for his chosen majors at Tsinghua. So he kept at it, year after year, ignoring all other universities, but never quite reaching the level required to get into his desired faculties at Tsinghua University.

In 2019, Tang reached his gaokao peak of 649 points out of 750, enough to get into many prestigious Chinese universities, even Tsinghua, but not the two majors he was aiming for, physics and chemistry. Most people would have just settled for the many other available options, but not “China’s most stubborn man”. His sights were settled on Tsinghua University and he would settle for no less.

Unfortunately, in the following years, Tang Shangjun’s gaokao results worsened. Some speculated that it was because of his age, that his memory wasn’t quite the same, while others that the 649-point score was his peak and he just didn’t have the capacity to score higher. Last year, Tang finally decided to to Central China Normal University’s physics and chemistry majors, but he scored 594 out of a total of 750, and those majors were filled by applicants who scored at least 608. He ranked about 6,000th out of some 460,000 gaokao takers in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, but he wasn’t good enough for his own ambitions.

Tang Shangjun told China Daily that last year’s gaokao would be his last, but he apparently got over his disappointment because this year he took the university admission exam for the 16th time. He once again scored over 600 points but fell short of realizing his dream of studying physics or chemistry at China’s most prestigious university. Now age 36, he is slowly beginning to realize that even if he eventually gets admitted, his chances of finding a good job after graduation are low, because he will be competing with youths in their early 20s.

“He thinks that getting into the country’s top prestigious university is a great success, helping to open up a good life, but life has many ways to be successful,” the director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in China commented on Tang’s situation. “Stubbornly pursuing a goal beyond one’s ability sometimes leads to failure.”

Over the last 16 years, Tang Shanjun has worked odd jobs to support himself and his aging parents, but he realizes that it might be time to focus more on finding a stable, fulfilling job instead of focusing most of his energy on getting into the university of his dreams. It is unclear if he will take the college admission exam again next year.

Tang Shangjun’s story is oddly similar to that of a fellow countryman known as the ‘King of Gaokao‘. 58-year-old Liang Shi had been trying to get admitted to his dream learning institution, the University of Sichuan, for 26 years before eventually calling it quits.