On the eve of the national college entrance examination in mainland China, purple underwear, cheongsam dresses, and sunflowers on e-commerce platforms have become the “darlings” of parents, with various businesses offering custom gift boxes for the exam, selling items with auspicious meanings.
The 2025 national college entrance examination will be held on June 7 and 8, with the foreign language listening test taking place on the afternoon of June 6.
Some businesses have launched custom-made products for the college entrance examination, with underwear printed with the words “Purple Butt Succeeds,” symbolizing “Success with Purple Butt” and “Pass the Exam Without Fail.” Stores have also created cheongsam dresses for parents to wear to the exam, symbolizing “Victory Unfolds.”
A parent named Zhao mentioned on June 5 that her family all wore purple underwear, and she bought a green cheongsam dress, symbolizing “Success with Purple Butt” and “Smooth Sailing Ahead for All.” While this may not fundamentally affect the children’s grades, starting an important day with good luck is a beautiful expectation.
On a certain online shopping platform, some daily necessities stores have designed their product promotions and information. For example, the purple underwear stores have advertisements like “Exam Exclusive ‘Purple Butt Succeeds’,” “College Entrance Exam Underwear,” and “Pass the Exam Without Fail.” A customer service representative from a daily necessities store indicated, “There has been a significant increase in orders over the past couple of days.”
At the same time, the sales of the purple underwear in that store have surprisingly increased by more than ten times.
In addition to purple underwear, cheongsam dresses have become the focus for many mothers, with the good wish of “Victory Unfolds” driving a surge in business for many stores. “As the college entrance exam approaches, cheongsam dresses are selling especially well. The green ones in our store have the highest sales, symbolizing ‘Smooth Sailing Ahead for All,'” a customer service representative from an online clothing store mentioned that cheongsam dresses are being sold out, with weekly sales doubling, as everyone wants to bring luck. Another store specializing in wholesale offline cheongsam dresses also mentioned a significant increase in sales volume.
There is a cheongsam specialty store in the Yintai Plaza on Chunxi Road in Chengdu. A store owner Ms. Chen noted that the number of consumers consulting and buying cheongsam dresses has noticeably increased recently, mainly among the group of “mothers of college entrance exam students.”
“Cheongsam prices range from hundreds to over a thousand yuan, with different materials and fabrics.” Ms. Chen stated that parents tend to choose colors with auspicious meanings, such as red symbolizing “Good Fortune,” green representing “Smooth Sailing Ahead,” and yellow for “Success in the Exam.” Patterns with koi fish and bamboo are also popular.
“A customer bought three cheongsam dresses directly, planning to wear them for the three days of their child’s college entrance exam, without repeating outfits each day.” Ms. Chen shared that, for example, wearing a red cheongsam on the first day, a green one on the second, and a gold one on the third give different connotations each day, expressing blessings and hopes for the child.
It is worth noting that different colors of cheongsam dresses also represent different meanings, with green symbolizing “Smooth Sailing Ahead,” red meaning “A Rainbow Ahead,” and gold symbolizing “Success in the Exam.” This reflects the earnest hopes of parents for their children.