An excellent performance in the 19th Chinese Bridge UK finals, held online on 19 September 2020, earned University of Leeds student Rebecca Mingotti Landriani ‘First Prize’ and an invitation to represent the UK in the international finals.
Rebecca, a final year student of Chinese and International Relations at the University of Leeds, was awarded 一等奖 (First Prize) behind 特等奖 (Grand Prize) winner Henry Rahman from SOAS.
Originally scheduled to take place in London in April, this year’s UK regional final was broadcast to over 1000 viewers via Zoom, Facebook and Youtube with ten Mandarin learners of various nationalities representing Universities around the UK.
Battling it out over two rounds they demonstrated their Mandarin language skills, cultural knowledge, creativity and performance ability to impress the judges, adapting extremely well to the challenge of delivering their speeches and artistic performances at home through a webcam.
His Excellence Mr LIU Xiaoming, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the UK, gave the opening speech. Other special guests in attendance to offer their support included University leaders, Confucius Institute Directors and the Director of Universities UK.
Rebecca’s performance
In her 3-minute speech Rebecca (Chinese name 吴芮慈 Wú Ruì Cí) spoke about how her passion for Mandarin grew out of her love for Chinese culture, especially Chinese painting, and displayed a Chinese painting that she did herself.
For the performance she channeled a favourite Chinese online personality of hers, Papi Jiang, delivering an entertaining rendition of her comedy monologue summarising the plot of the famous Chinese play 雷雨 (Léiyǔ – thunderstorm) by playwright Cao Yu.
You can watch the video that inspired her performance on Youtube.
Learn more about Rebecca and her Chinese learning journey in the two-minute video that she prepared for the competition (in Chinese):
Proud teachers
Business Confucius Institute Mandarin teacher Maggie Man, who worked closely with Rebecca to prepare her for the competition, said:
Rebecca’s passion for Chinese language and culture shone through in her performances, and she did us all proud with her confident and entertaining delivery. I’m excited to continue our work together as Rebecca prepares for the international competition.
Rebecca’s Chinese tutors in the East Asian Studies Department are also delighted at this result.
Next steps
Rebecca will now represent the UK in the international finals along with Grand Prize winner Henry Rahman (SOAS) and joint Second Prize winners Olajumoke Oluwakemi Ogunlaiye (Coventry University) and Robin John Wilson (Herriot-Watt University).
She follows in the footsteps of recent Chinese graduates James Holmes and Ahmad Elmouniery, who came second in Europe (欧洲一等奖) and fifth in Europe (欧洲三等奖) respectively in the international televised finals in China last year.
