On the afternoon of May 5, the Afghan final of the 18th “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition for College and Middle School Students was held in the auditorium of the Confucius Institute (Chinese Department) of Kabul University (CIKU). Guests from Kabul University, teachers and students of CIKU and Marefat School (a Chinese teaching site), as well as the representatives of Xinhua News Agency, CCTV, and Chinese enterprises were invited to attend the competition.
The competition is themed on “One World, One Family” and “Hand in Hand with Chinese to Build Dreams for the Future”. A total of 8 university contestants and 4 middle school contestants took part in the competition. Through three sessions, i.e. keynote speeches, talent shows and knowledge quiz, each group finally produced 1 third prize, 1 second prize, 1 first prize and 6 excellent prizes.
In the speech session, Azada Ahmadi (Zhang Dan), a contestant in the university group, performed particularly well. She has a standard pronunciation and speaks in measured tones. In her speech, she told her experiences and feelings, “To avoid the war, my parents moved to Pakistan. I was also born there too. But my nationality is Afghanistan. Now I am studying and living in Afghanistan and has become a student in the Chinese department. In my view, Afghanistan and Pakistan are both my family. In the future, I will go to China, which will become my family too. The world is a family!”. Her wonderful performance won rounds of applause from the audience.
In the talent show session, the cudgel play of Taher Faizi, a contestant in the middle school group, aroused great enthusiasm and applauses from the audience. The blow-painting performances of Arif Jafari (Jia Furui) and Sabera Ahmadi (Su Bei) in the university group were unique and refreshing for the audience. In addition, other contestants also presented Chinese songs, paper-cutting skills and tea performances.
In the knowledge quiz session, the contestants and the audience were both very tense. The contestants needed to quickly answer in Chinese questions about the Chinese language and culture, including multiple choices, fill-in-the-blank, and true or false questions. The audience held their breath and learned a lot about China and the Chinese culture.
Finally, after an intense scoring session, the judges gave the ranking of the contestants. Azada Ahmadi (Zhang Dan) in the university group won the championship, and Taher Faizi in the middle school group emerged as the champion. Representing Afghanistan, they will go to China this summer to take part in the finals of the global “Chinese Bridge Competition”.
