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Languages and Cultures students Martha Harwood, a final year student studying French and Chinese, and Aron O’Shea, a final year student studying French, Spanish and Chinese, competed in the Chinese Bridge competition held at University College London (UCL) on Friday 23rd June 2023.

The Chinese Bridge competition is a Chinese proficiency competition for people studying Chinese. The event is organised by the Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC) of the Chinese Ministry of Education and the theme of this year’s competition was ‘One World, One Family’.

After making it through the preliminary rounds, Aron and Martha were amongst the 18 finalists selected to compete in the London finals. With around 200 spectators in the audience and many more online, the event attracted widespread attention.

For the first round, each participant gave a speech in Chinese. After that, each person was asked some questions in Chinese by the presenters to show their Chinese cultural knowledge. For the final round, each participant gave a Chinese cultural performance. Martha gave a Chinese painting and Tai Chi performance, and Aron gave a speech on environmental protection. Both their performances were very well received by the judges and audience.

Martha and Aron did an excellent job showing their range of Chinese language and culture skills, and they both received a participation award for their efforts.

After the event, Martha was asked by China Central Television (CCTV) reporters to give an exclusive interview.

Aron O’Shea described the competition as ‘a good opportunity to expand on our previous Chinese language and culture in a fun and interesting way’.

‘Although I was nervous about the competition it turned out to be a lot of fun. It's a great a way to gain some extra Chinese language experience and meet other language learners from across the UK.’ - Martha Harwood

Thank you to the Lancaster University Confucius Institute teachers for helping to prepare the students well for the competition.