The 14th Chinese Bridge-Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students started this March, and six finalists out of 133 candidates from 97 countries completed the championship in the city of Changsha in Hunan Province last Sunday.

Organized by the Confucius Institute and the People’s Government of Hunan Province, this international competition, in its fourteenth year, attracted thousands of Chinese learners from 97 countries in five different continents to participate in local auditions. But only 133 participants qualified after several rounds of selection to travel to China to take part in the competition.

China.org.cn interviewed five “survivors” from each continent group in Beijing on July 24, to find what they thought about China and the Chinese Bridge competition.

Sun Fuyu (the names of all candidates will be given in Chinese throughout due to Chinese Bridge regulations), a talented language learner from Cameroon who has just learnt Chinese for 10 months, was surprised at the development of China on his first visit. “This is the first time I have been to China, and my only thought about China before I arrived here was that China is an old country. I was surprised that China is quite modern and it offers a good combination of historical and modern things. I just love it,” Sun said.

The real China also was different from what Xu Tianyou’s impression before he arrived. Xu Tianyou (Chinese name) is an Italian candidate who has visited China “countless times” and is a big fan of Chinese literature. Before his first arrival, Xu thought Chinese people still wore long gowns and every Chinese knows kung fu. But through traveling in person, he began to discover what China was really like via learning Chinese.

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)