China's "China’s brutally long" standardized college entrance exam questions

I've never really understood the level of importance placed by some schools on standardized tests - particularly on kids. I think college entrance exams might be a bit different as you do need some type of standard measure but I can only imagine how unbearable the pressure is on some of these people. If you thought that writing the SATs was rough, think of something about 10x worse given the importance Chinese universities place on them. Check out some of the essay questions here (ChinaGeeks).