146 contestants from 108 countries arrived in Beijing and visited the Confucius Institute Headquarters on July 10th, and has officially entered the semi-finals and finals of the competition, which will last for one month.

             

The 15th “Chinese Bridge” is co-sponsored by Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban) and the People’s Government of Hunan Province; organized by Hunan Provincial Education Department, Hunan Broadcasting System and Base for International Promotion of Chinese Language and Culture, co-organized by Hunan TV Station, Hunan Mass Media Vocational and Technical College and Hunan Educational Television. The theme of the competition is “Dreams Enlighten the Future” and the contestants are all foreign college students with their mother tongue not Chinese, selected from more than 140 zones, 110 countries through layers of overseas preliminary competitions.

             

The competition this year pays more attention to language and cultural knowledge. There are some bold innovations in rules and programming forms to make it more attractive, for example, the introduce of excellent Chinese youth group to the competition to communicate, interact and compete with contestants will undoubtedly show the distinctive glamour of multicultural communication. In this competition, there will be altogether 4 Cross-Bridge Contests, 1 Repecharge, 4 Semi-finals and 1 Final Competition to decide the grand champion, champions of each continents, individual awards and other awards.

It is the 15th anniversary of Chinese Bridge this year and some excellent contestant representatives of the past 15 years will come back to the stage at the Final Completion in Changsha on August 10th to share their life-gains brought by Chinese language and their unforgettable experience and wonderful stories on their “Chinese Bridge”.

The Chinese Bridge Competition, including Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students and Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign Secondary Students and so on, is an international Chinese program sponsored by Confucius Institute Headquarters(Hanban). It has successfully attracted millions of teenager contestant from more than 110 countries to join the event since 2002, together with hundreds of millions of audience and has become an important event in the international cultural exchange sector, known as Chinese “Olympic”. It has enjoyed a high reputation of a bridge of culture, a bridge of friendship and a bridge of the mind that unite the world.