Polly's Chinese Bridge 2025 Experience
I am so grateful I had the opportunity to take part in this year’s Chinese Bridge Speaking Competition 汉语桥比赛.
The competition was comprised of three elements: a speech in Chinese, answering questions related to Chinese culture, and a talent.
Through my preparation for this competition, teachers at the Confucius Institute offered me endless support. Qing Yuan helped me with writing my speech and patiently helped me rehearse. She also went through all of the questions provided by the Chinese Bridge committee, and arranged Guzheng lessons for me with an incredibly talented player, Mio. After this competition I feel much more confident in preparing and presenting a speech in Chinese and I was interested to learn about Chinese history and culture whilst practicing for the question and answer session. My favourite part of the preparation was practicing the Guzheng, a skill which I will carry with me and would love to continue learning.
The actual competition was an incredible day and I was impressed by the organisation that went into running this event. Every contestant in this competition was also very dedicated to learning Chinese and showcased a unique talent related to Chinese culture, which I thoroughly enjoyed watching. Seeing other student’s hard work and strong language ability was inspiring and encouraging that I, a non native speaker, would also be able to reach this level of fluency in the future. It was also so interesting to hear about future career plans of fellow contestants and how they hope to continue using their Chinese after they graduate. Being immersed in so much Chinese language through the day left me finding myself to even start thinking in Chinese after I left the event, and accidentally muttering ‘谢谢’, to strangers who moved to let me pass by in London on the way home.
I feel very fortunate to have been able to participate in this competition and thought it was an amazing experience. I would love to be able to return after my study abroad year to compete in this competition again!
You can watch a video of the Polly's performance on the Chinese Bridge Content here from 3:21:00 onwards-