说起“毛坦厂”，难免会有人瞪着眼睛，迟疑着问：“生产毛毯的厂子?”其实，毛坦厂不是工厂，跟毛毯也完全不沾边儿，它是安徽省六安市下面的一个乡镇。倒是这个镇上的高中，在社会上流传着一个与“工厂”有关的名声――“亚洲最大的高考工厂”。
After bumping up and down along a winding trail for several hours, 19-year-old Zheng Hanchao finally arrived at Maotanchang, a small town in the mid-west part of Anhui Province. Here, he will spend the following nine months to prepare for his second Gaokao, or the national college entrance exam.
Yet what really surprised him, was that the place seemed to be a ghost town as the streets were empty and shops and restaurants were all closed.
However, after several days, everything in the small town seemed to wake up again on August 29, the day on which the town's cram schools started their new semester.
"It's unbelievable," said Zheng, "The town is just like a cell phone which has the capability to switch modes: sound on or off."
For local residents, on the other hand, it's become very common to see this kind of switch occur twice a year as cram schools make up the core of the entire town of Maotanchang.
Magic schools 'ensure' students enter college
Maotanchang is a small town located in the southeastern part of Liu'an City. With its township area of only 3.5 square kilometers, the original population of the town is about 5,000.
When school starts again every August, the resident number in the area surges to some 50,000, over 20,000 among whom are middle school students; another 10,000 are accompanying parents from nearby towns and cities.
The two schools attracting these massive student influxes are Maotanchang Middle School and Jin'an Middle School. The former one is a public school established in 1939 during the Anti-Japanese War; while the latter is a joint venture school founded in 2005 by Maotanchang Middle School and a local private middle school.
Over the past decade, enrollment rates at these two schools have been more than 80 percent each year. In 2013, a combined total of 11,222 students from both schools participated in the national college entrance examination; 9,258 of them achieved the required grade to enter college.
Thanks to their ultra-high enrollment rate, thousands of parents from Anhui and other provinces across the country are eager to send their teenagers, especially those who failed to obtain the necessary score during the previous year's Gaokao session, to the small town in order to make "huge" progress after one year of studying.
In the mind of many a parent, as long as their child can study at one of these two "magic" schools, he or she has already made their way into a university.
School becomes the core and economic engine
In order to provide better services to all students and their parents, the town's local government has built a range of infrastructures in recent years, including a 3.5 kV transformer sub-station, a 3.4 hectares refuse landfill and a sewage treatment plant with a daily capacity of 5,000 tons.
Furthermore, it has shut down all internet bars, coffee shops or Karaoke rooms in the town, because the parents believe that those places of entertainment are detrimental to their children's focus.
"The entire town lives on the two schools," said Yang Huajun, office director of the local government, "For us, these two schools are not only core of Maotanchang, but also the engine which can stimulate the local economy."
With more and more nonlocal parents moving to the small town, the hotel and real estate industries have undergone great development in recent years.
The average annual rental rate has now gone up to more than 12,000 yuan, with the cheapest place going for some 4,000 yuan; the most expensive ones will cost you more than 20,000 yuan a year.
As a result, to earn 200, 000 to 300, 000 yuan in a single year proves no difficulty for local residents, as long as they have some apartments to rent out.
Besides taking care of their children, many accompanying parents work in the town's clothing shops and manufacturing factories, providing abundant human recourses for local companies.
According to Yang, several large clothing enterprises are planning to set up manufacturing plants in Maotanchang. "We never worry about labor shortage," Yang said proudly.
In 2012, the town's fiscal revenue reached almost 15 million yuan, four times the number of neighboring Donghekou town.
Yang said that some years ago, Maotanchang still relied on selling tea and bamboo. Nowadays, however, the town has found a more suitable and effective mode of development: the so-called "campus life" business.
Just as Mayor Han Huaiguo once told the media, "The relationship between the school and the local government is like that of a family. Any of the schools' needs, are the town's needs as well. All residents and government officials in Maotanchang have tied our own lives tightly to the two schools."(China.org.cn)
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每年有近万名复读生及应届高三学生在这里进行“锻造”，在高考的检验下过关后，输往全国各地的大学。从规模和“产品合格率”来说，这家皖西山区的“高考工厂”，制造着高考史上的“神话”。
复读，或者按照校方的标准表述――补习，无疑是这里最响亮的品牌。近年来，每年有超过8000名来自安徽省内外的复读生涌进这里，接受再次的加工和磨砺。
2013年安徽约有10.5万名复读生参加高考，小小毛坦厂就占了近8%。
挤满学生的中学，是这座小镇的“心脏”，几乎整个镇子人们的生活节奏，都要保持着和它同样的律动。
同时，它也是拉动小镇运转起来的“引擎”。当地的居民说，“没有学校呀，毛坦厂的经济就会崩溃”。
将毛坦厂镇上的人们拽进同一生活频率的引力，来自这里的两所高级中学――毛坦厂中学和金安中学。
毛坦厂中学始建于1939年，是一所在抗日战争中诞生的老校。2005年，毛坦厂中学与当地一家私立学校联合成立股份制的金安中学，接纳“补习生”和应届高中生，两校相对独立，教学资源共享。但在当地，老百姓还是习惯合称两所学校为“毛中”，称补习生为“复读生”。
神奇，从高考数据上看，或许是对地处山坳小镇的毛中毫不夸张的评价。近10年来，毛中的本科升学率连续达到8成以上，而且还不断将自身的记录刷新。今年，毛中有11222名考生参加高考，其中9258人达到本科分数线。
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