University of Bahrain student wins Excellence Award in ‘Chinese Bridge’ international competition

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

A female student from the University of Bahrain won the Excellence International Award in the 20th “Chinese Bridge” competition for Chinese language and culture for foreign university students. Siraj Hussain, representing the Department of Architecture through the Confucius Institute at the university, outperformed about 70,000 Chinese language learners from around the world.

Around 125 winners from 101 countries represented their countries to compete in the final round on 22 September. The prizes for the final round were announced on 30 October.

Siraj is the first contestant from the Kingdom of Bahrain to participate in the “Chinese Bridge” semi-finals from the Asian continent.

She completed the Chinese Knowledge Quiz by answering questions online and submitted a three-minute Chinese-language video clip, which was shown on China Central Radio’s short video platform, and registered 8.038 million views.

Siraj thanked her teachers at the Confucius Institute for helping combine her specialisation at the university with her personal interests, and present classical or heritage architecture in Bahrain to a global audience in the Chinese language.

She also discussed the characteristics of classical architecture in Bahrain and China. The Confucius Institute pointed out that Siraj was “a good and distinguished representative of cultural exchange.”

The Center for Language Exchange and Cooperation of the Ministry of Education in China offered Siraj a scholarship to learn Chinese for one semester, and this scholarship is valid for three years.

“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 return with some of the beautiful charms of China to the Kingdom of Bahrain,” Institute said.

The “Chinese Bridge” competition for Chinese language and culture is a large-scale international competition sponsored by the Cooperation Centre for the Exchange of Chinese and Foreign Languages of the Chinese Ministry of Education. This year, the regional competitions were held during the months of June and July, and about 7,0000 university students from all over the world took part.