The bigger challenge was the last item of the exam. The teacher suddenly announced that each candidate had to sing a song. The first 11 girls all sang successfully. But when the teacher motioned to Jiaojiao to sing, she fell introverted and silent, staring at her teacher with her eyes wide open, unable to utter a word. Her classmates looked on in a hushed silence.

Eight out of 13 girls in the ballet class finally made it through to the second phase of their studies. Jiaojiao failed, and the 11-year-old girl went home to cry in her room. "Compared to actually failing the exam, it was the fact that she couldn't sing that made her sad," her mother says. But she eventually decided to take another crack at the ballet exam in the coming year. "If that doesn't work, I will take another route that I like."

The school now offers a lot of special classes for students to choose from, and the experience of performing on stage in around cities has certainly helped these girls to broaden their horizons.

While once winding road stretching out in front of these girls crossed the moors and reached as far the hills, they now know that it continues on to distant places they can one day visit.