SPbU students among winners of Chinese Bridge competition

This year’s theme is «One World, One Family». In the first of three rounds, contestants had to prepare a monologue — the judges looked for correct pronunciation and grammar, and whether the theme of the monologue corresponded to the general theme of the competition. 

Poetry and tongue twisters, shadow theatre puppets, traditional Chinese paper cutting, Journey to the West cosplay, song and dance — these were just some of the ways the contestants demonstrated their mastery of the Chinese language, as well as their knowledge of the history and geography of the Celestial Empire.

Chinese Bridge is an international project to promote the Chinese language and culture. Winners of the competition have the opportunity to study free of charge at the best Chinese universities. So far, around one million people from more than 100 countries have taken part.

A separate test was an extemporaneous speech on a randomly chosen topic. Candidates were given 20 seconds to prepare a two-minute speech within the given guidelines. 

Professor Alexey Rodionov (Department of Chinese Philology), Chairman of the Jury, First Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Asian and African Studies at SPbU, noted that this year’s jury had a difficult task.

I think our competition was a success this year. The participants were well prepared and surprised us in many ways. The wide range of scores shows that some of them have trained extra hard with an eye on the national and possibly world stage of the competition. I am sure that many of them come from our university.

SPbU Professor Alexey Rodionov

Also on the jury were Tatyana Pan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Far East Department; Tatyana Prutskikh, Head of the Oriental Languages Department of St Petersburg State University of Economics, Associate Professor; Zhang Xunli, Director of the Confucius Academy of Oriental Languages and Culture in St Petersburg; and Peng Yinlai, Director of the Chinese Culture Centre in St Petersburg. 

One of the winners of the competition was Veronika Klapishevskaya, a first year Chinese Philology student at SPbU. In addition, two of our students shared third place: Mariam Hakobjanyan, a 2nd year Chinese History student, and Maria Nikitina, a 4th year Chinese Philology student.

The event was co-organised by the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in St Petersburg with the support of the Confucius Institute at SPbU.

In separate nominations, the prize for the best knowledge of China was awarded to Veronika Prokasheva, a second-year History of China student, and the prize for the best monologue and the audience’s favourite award, presented by the guest of honour of the event, the General Director of Shaanxi Logistics Corporation, Mr Fang Dong, was awarded to Vladislav Gorbunov, a third-year Law student (with advanced studies in Chinese language and Chinese law). 

The national stage of the competition will be held in Novosibirsk with the support of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China (Moscow) and the Education Departments of the Consulates General of the People’s Republic of China in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok and Kazan.

This year the competition was held for the twenty-second time and gathered participants from SPbU, Saint Petersburg State University of Economics, Herzen University, Higher School of Economics (St Petersburg) and Pushkin Leningrad State University.