HANOI - THE procession of young people continues all afternoon in the muggy heat, and so does the message from Phan Bich Hong's megaphone.

'Please don't touch the head of the tortoise!' Ms Hong, 20, calls. She is one of several student volunteers in blue shirts who try to protect the 82 ancient stone tortoises on the grounds of Hanoi's Temple of Literature.

The tortoises and attached stelae honour 1,307 graduates of royal exams hundreds of years ago on the site of the country's first university.

Modern-day students flock to the temple hoping the tortoises can boost their chances in nationwide examinations that begin this weekend.

The Ministry of Education said more than one million candidates from across the country will sit the exams for a coveted spot at a higher-education institution.

Ms Hong said the annual tortoise ritual began last Sunday.

'All of them want to touch the head of the tortoise because they think that it makes them perform well at the exam,' she said in an open-air pavilion with rows of 20 tortoises and attached stelae, some of them cracked. 'We just try to encourage them not to.' Some are content to squat down beside the tortoises to have their photos taken.

Others insist on dashing in to slide a hand quickly over one of the heads, the smoothness attesting to the numbers of students who have sought their inspiration.

'My brother asked me to do it,' an 18-year-old woman said after successfully completing the tortoise dash. 'He came here to touch the head of the tortoise, and he passed.' The student declined to give her name but said she hoped to enter Phuong Dong University in Hanoi.

A tree-shaded courtyard contains four large tortoise-and-stelae pavilions, and two smaller ones, on either side of a fish pond.

The grey stelae are engraved in ancient Chinese with works of literature, and carry the names of mandarins who organised the royal exams, as well as the names and birthplaces of successful exam candidates. -- AFP