The 18^th International Student Mandarin Contest of ZhejiangUniversity was successfully held on October 16,2021. As a brand culturalactivity of the university, the Mandarin Contest has built an important stagefor Chinese and international students to exchange cultures and improve theirlanguage expression ability. Different from previous years, in order to attractmore international students who love Mandarin to join, this competition iscarried out online. After registration and primary election, 15 internationalstudents from 11 countries, including Russia, the Democratic Republic of theCongo, South Korea, Mongolia, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia,Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, finally competed on the stage.

The competition was divided into two parts, including keynote speechand essay recitation. In the keynote speech, the students vividly told thestory of learning Chinese and studying in China with themes such as the charmof Chinese, the life in China, the cities of China, and the development ofChina under the epidemic. Among them, there were many touching stories such asinspirational journey to learn Chinese, harvest during the epidemic, friendshipbetween China and foreign countries, reflecting the deep love for Chinese andChinese culture. In the essay recitation, the contestants recited classic proseand philosophical poems with great emotion.

The competition invited professional judges Wang Xindi, Li Zixuan andHong Jiawei, who are experienced in broadcasting and speech training, as wellas two teachers from the International College, Shen Dan and Zhong Guangzheng,to be the judges of this online Mandarin contest. After the competition, thejudges made comprehensive comments on the contestants from five aspects: speechcontent, language expression, physical language, theme image and performanceeffect. They also shared the key points of speech and reading with their ownprofessional experience, and talked about how to better develop speech inMandarin, better convey emotions and show the charm of Chinese language fromthe perspective of speech selection, speech logic and voice intonation. Thejudges also unanimously affirmed the expressiveness and appeal of internationalstudents in their speeches.

After comprehensive evaluation by judges and teachers and voting byonline public judges, KINIAMBI ZOLA ELIEL and other two students won the "TopPerformer Award", HONG SEONGEUN and other two students won the "Most EloquentAward", PARK KYUNGSU and other two students got the "Most SpectacularAward", and the most popular award was given to ALEKSEEVA ALENA. Thestudents who performed well in this competition will be recommended to takepart in the 18^th Zhejiang University Mandarin Contest, and we lookforward to their more exciting performances in the rankings.