Late senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's policy changes gave Zhang Manling, a publicity official in charge of film and TV culture in southwestern China's Yunnan province, the chance to move from cleaning classrooms to producing award-winning TV shows.

Exactly 26 years ago, Zhang, then 25, received an admission notice of prestigious Beijing University after Deng Xiaoping resumed college entrance examinations, which had been halted during the decade-long turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

An admission notice has entirely changed Zhang's life.

While in university, Zhang wrote a medium-length novel titled "A Beautiful Place" based on her own vivid life experience in the Yingjiang county of Yunnan province, where she settled down in as an "educated youth." The term refers to secondary school graduates who were unable to pursue a college education during the Cultural Revolution. The novel was then adapted into a film "Sacrifices to the Youth" which was popular nationwide.

In the meantime, Zhang ran for a delegate to the Beijing's Haidian District People's Congress for which she became a cover figure of Time magazine, a US-based weekly. After graduation, Zhang, recommended by quite a few noted writers, became a member of Tianjin Writers' Association and a professional writer.

During the Cultural Revolution, more than 14 million educated young people from cities and towns around China were sent to countryside for "reeducation."

Zhang was among them. In 1969, Zhang was sent to the Yingjiang county after she completed her senior high school.

"In those years, I aspired to go back to my native city, just as the rest of educated youth," she says.

In 1974, Zhang contracted acute arthritis and returned to Kunming. She was assigned to work as gofer at a medical college.

"Though back home and with a job, I felt very depressed and disheartened all day long. My fate remained a mystery to me although I spent a good deal of time pondering over it. I wondered what the survival of the fittest is," says Zhang.

During the ten-year turmoil, all the institutions of higher learning did away with entrance exams based on merits. Recruitment of college students was decided in compliance with recommendation of farmers and workers.

When she heard the news that Deng Xiaoping's urges caused the college entrance exams to be reinstated in 1977, Zhang was excited and filled with joy.

"I felt a fresh wind blowing into my life and a new hope emerging before me," she acknowledges. "I postponed my wedding day and braced myself for the entrance examination," she says. In 1977, Zhang's dream came true.

In the late 1980s, Zhang gave up her post as a professional writer. She launched the Manling Art Development Co. and became an independent producer in Hainan in south China.

Now, Zhang is deputy director of the Film and TV Center of the Publicity Department of the Yunnan Committee of the Communist Party of China. Some of the TV series and historical documentaries she produced have won her both national awards and fame.

Source: Xinhua