NEWS
Representing the Kingdom of Bahrain in the “Bridge” Competition Against 70,000 Competitors.. A Student from UoB Wins the “Excellence” Award in An International Competition in the Chinese Language and Culture
Sakhir – University of Bahrain
10 November 2021
A student from the University of Bahrain (UoB) won the international “Excellence” prize in the 20th “Chinese Bridge” Competition for Chinese language and culture for foreign university students, outperforming about 70,000 competitors from around the world.
Siraj Hussain, a student in the Department of Architecture through the Confucius Institute at the University, represented the Kingdom of Bahrain on the international stage, by competing with Chinese language learners from all over the world. As 125 winners from 101 countries represented their countries to compete in the final round on the 22nd of September 2021, and the prizes for the final round were announced on the 30th of October 2021.
As the student Hussain is the first contestant from the Kingdom of Bahrain to participate in the “Chinese Bridge” semi-finals from the Asian section, after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. The student completed the Chinese Knowledge Competition by answering questions online and submitted a three-minute Chinese-language video, which was uploaded on China Central Radio’s short video platform, and had 8.038 million views.
For her part, the student indicated that she had the help of Confucius Institute instructors at UoB, and she combined her major at the University with her personal interests, to present classical or heritage architecture from the Kingdom of Bahrain to a global audience in the Chinese language. Also, she discussed the characteristics of classical architecture in Bahrain and China.
While the Confucius Institute at UoB pointed out that the student was “a distinguished representative of cultural exchange.”, and the Center for Language Exchange and Cooperation of the Ministry of Education in China offered Hussain a scholarship to learn the Chinese language for one semester, and this scholarship shall be valid for three years.
Furthermore, the Institute added that “We expect the student to seize this precious opportunity to study the Chinese language, learn more about the concepts of architecture and architectural design patterns in China, and to bring back some of the beautiful charm of China to the Kingdom of Bahrain.”
It is worth noting that the “Chinese Bridge” Competition for Chinese Language and Culture is a large-scale international competition sponsored by the Cooperation Center for the Exchange of Chinese and Foreign Languages of the Chinese Ministry of Education, and for this year, the regional competitions were held during the months of June and July, in which about seventy thousand university students from all over the world participated.
