On June 8, CIE hosted a spectacular Mandarin Speech Contest in Bajiao Pavilion, with the contestants all foreign students from CIE.

With the theme as “Charming ECUST, Happy Chinese”, the contest was divided into three levels according to the competitors’ language proficiency. The 17 contestants were respectively from South Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Denmark, Pakistan, France and other countries, and they shared the funny experiences due to cultural differences, family affection, friendship, love, joys and sorrows of daily life they have experienced in China, unfolding a vivid scene of studying and living abroad. Their quick wit, brilliant ideas, fluent Chinese and native-like pronunciation won continuous applause during the contest. Meanwhile, additional artistic performers alternately appeared on stage, such as the Russian girl Anna who sang quite professionally and British boy Robin whose Chinese song won him fervent applause. The contest lasted from 8:30 to noon, teeming the auditorium with joy and liveliness.

After exciting and tense competition, Izzy from Yemen, RuanGuosheng from Vietnam and Ye Erjiang from Kazakhstan claimed the first prizes, six and eight contestants won the second and third prize respectively.

Before the contest started, the vice-dean of CIE delivered a speech encouraging the international students to study Chinese so as to build bridges between Chinese and foreign cultures.