British students parade mastering of Chinese language

A student from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, wearing a kilt on stage, kicked off the final of a competition where non-native Chinese speakers delivered speeches and performances in Mandarin.

22-year-old Cameron Scott was among the 11 finalists at the 17th Chinese Proficiency Competition UK regional final held in London on Saturday.

The contest is an international competition organized by the Confucius Institute and the finals will be held in China.

Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said at the competition that he’s
pleased to see that there has been a growing enthusiasm for learning the Chinese language in Britain over recent years.

Students from colleges and universities around the UK show off their Chinese language proficiency, knowledge of China and cultural skills.

Scott lived in Shanghai for seven years from the age of 9 but said he didn’t take learning Chinese seriously then and returning to the UK he thought it was a missed opportunity.

“When I came back to the UK to study my A-levels I really want to put in the emphasis in learning Chinese and then I applied to study it at university,” he said.

Scott’s parents come from Stirling in Scotland and that’s why he decided to wear a kilt to the competition.He played the guitar and sang the popular Chinese song, Look Over Here Girl by Richie Jen.

“Chinese is great fun, because it’s so different from English and the characters are beautiful,” he said.

But it was Gareth Erskine, 23, from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies who impressed the panel of judges and won the competition’s top prize.

The student gave a speech about and also played the erhu, a Chinese two-stringed instrument.

“I’m ecstatic, I can’t find the words to describe it, I’m very surprised,” Erskine said, “The competition was quite stressful but I”m glad I was able to give a good performance.”

First prize runner-up, 20-year-old Samuel Robbins, also a student at SOAS, said his interest in Confucius, which was a topic in his speech, sparked his interested in Chinese.

“I heard how hard Chinese is and that it was a difficult language, but it was also interesting, so I was really curious to find out more,” Robbins said.

And Anna Moilanen, from the University of Aberdeen, delighted the crowd with her rendition of Just a Dream by Na Ying and she won the most popular contestant of the night, voted by the audience.