fenbi

What it is

Fenbi (粉笔, the Chinese word for chalk) is an online exam preparation company whose main business is China's civil service examinations. Its About page says Fenbi was founded in 2015, describes it as a provider of non-degree vocational education and training, and lists the fields it has expanded into since: public institution recruitment, teacher recruitment, postgraduate entrance exams, finance and accounting, the college English tests (英语四六级), the national legal exam, construction qualifications and open courses. It is a learner product. Candidates come to it to pass the written test and interview for a government or public sector post, or to earn a professional qualification. The About page also states that Fenbi listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 9, 2023, under the stock code 2469.HK, and joined the Hang Seng Composite Index in June 2023. The site is entirely in Chinese.

Exams covered

The site organizes everything by exam. The home page menu runs from the national civil service exam (国考) and the provincial exams (省考) to public institution recruitment (事业单位), teacher recruitment, banks and rural credit cooperatives, medical recruitment and the "three supports and one assistance" graduate program (三支一扶), state-owned enterprises, the selected graduate and village official schemes (选调, 大学生村官), and police recruitment. Further tags cover military civilian staff, community workers, medical qualifications, internet company campus hiring and the tour guide certificate.

For the national and provincial civil service exams, the material is split by paper: the Administrative Aptitude Test (行测), the essay paper (申论) and the interview. For teachers it covers the teacher qualification certificate (教师资格证) at kindergarten, primary and secondary level as well as the teacher recruitment exams, which is where Fenbi doubles as certification prep. Public institution candidates get their own papers, including the vocational aptitude test, the comprehensive application paper and public basic knowledge.

Courses and what they cost

The home page has a section for live classes, system classes and trial classes, with a featured selection and prices in yuan. A course pack for the 2027 exam season's civil service written test, sold under the Fenbi 全家桶 (all-in-one bundle) name and taught by Shan Shuling and others, is listed at ¥39 as a limited-time offer. A 2026 morning and evening study-companion class, run Monday to Friday, costs ¥9. A course-only package on political theory, general knowledge and public basic knowledge for the same season, which the listing says covers several exam types, costs ¥19. A collection of mock exam contests for the first 2027 joint public institution exam (Category A), with explanation and review classes, is listed at ¥0.

The teacher profiles show what sits behind those labels. Zhao Xiaoxi's bio says she led the development of the written-test AI system class (笔试 AI 系统班), the AI practice class (笔试 AI 刷题班) and the 全家桶 bundle, which it calls intelligent learning products built for online study. Zhang Yuehan's bio says he oversees Fenbi's intelligent essay grading and its large-model grading for the essay paper and built its essay simulation paper team. Wang Dequan lists the system class, the AI class and the premium class among the course types he teaches.

Practice bank, mock exams and free material

Practice runs through the Fenbi question bank (粉笔题库). The site carries mock exam papers and past exam papers sorted by the national exam and by province, with question sets for the civil service aptitude, essay and interview papers, the public institution papers, every teacher qualification subject, and bank, rural credit cooperative, police, medical and military civilian staff recruitment. Mock exam contests (模考大赛) run for the big joint exams.

Short free lessons in the 小讲堂 series cover aptitude test topics such as spatial reasoning and logical judgment, essay writing technique, public basic knowledge, current affairs and teacher education theory, and a free courses block offers talks such as why new graduates have an advantage in the civil service exam. The app's download panel promises a free question bank and live explanations.

The position database and exam calendar

The position database (粉笔职位库) helps a candidate decide where to apply. It filters positions by exam type, location, and education and major, and the quick filter shows only positions currently open for registration. For the 2026 national exam the database page shows 20714 positions and 38119 people to be hired, breaks the posts down by type of employer and by province with the number of applicants and the number who passed review, and ranks the ten positions with the most applicants, the ten with the highest applicant-to-place ratio and the ten with the most applications pending review. Position tables for earlier national exams go back to 2020, and most provincial tables go back to 2022. The home page also runs an exam calendar of recruitment notices with registration and written exam dates, plus lists of open and closed calls for civil service, public institution, teacher, bank, hospital and state-owned enterprise posts.

Teachers and textbooks

Fenbi puts its teachers up front, and each profile gives subject, degree, years of teaching, learner numbers and a student rating. Tao Chang'an (陶昶安) teaches quantitative relations and data analysis as well as interviews. His profile says he studied quantitative economics as a postgraduate at a 985 university and has 18 years in the field, more than 22000 teaching hours, more than 560万 person-times taught (5.6 million), 16 exam books and 86 lecture handouts co-written, and more than 2800 teachers trained. Zhao Xiaoxi (赵晓曦), who teaches verbal comprehension, holds a humanities doctorate from a 211 university and has 15 years of civil service written-test teaching, more than 500万 person-times taught (5 million) and a 4.9 rating from 339553 ratings. Shan Shuling teaches the essay paper with 14 years of experience, and Xu Lai teaches judgment and reasoning with a master's in psychology and 13 years of teaching. Some instructors have worked in the public sector themselves: Huang Cong lists five years as a civil servant, and Xu Xia passed into the courts and procuratorate system before teaching.

The team writes the study books. Zhao Xiaoxi's bio names 《行测 5000 题》 (5000 aptitude test questions), 《申论 100 题》 (100 essay questions), 《极致模考卷》 (mock exam papers) and 《模考 80 分》, and calls them benchmark books for the written test. A Beijing Daily report shown on the About page says the company has registered 132 trademarks and obtained 27 copyright registration certificates for its civil service exam books as part of its fight against pirated copies.

Online and offline, and support

Fenbi describes its model as OMO, joining online and offline resources, and says it has opened offline learning centers in many cities and branch schools in several provinces. Learners use the website and the Fenbi app, whose tools include position search with live updates, exam news, an ID photo template tool and 粉笔魔方, a 3D cube for spatial geometry questions. Customer service runs on a hotline from 9:00 to 21:00, Monday to Sunday, with online support inside the app. The About page lists a high-tech enterprise certificate from December 2022 among its honors.

Who it suits

Fenbi suits a Chinese-speaking candidate preparing for the national or provincial civil service exams, a public institution exam, teacher recruitment or the teacher qualification certificate. The entry cost is low: free mini-lectures, a free question bank, a ¥0 mock contest collection and a ¥9 study-companion class let a candidate try the teaching before buying a ¥39 or ¥19 package. The named teachers with long records suit candidates who choose by instructor, and the position database is useful even before the first lesson, because it shows how crowded each post is.

The limits come from the focus. Everything is in Chinese and built around Chinese public sector and qualification exams, so it is of no use for exams elsewhere. The volume of material is large, and a first-time candidate may need time to find the right course among the many exam types and packages.