21 October 2008

IPC Student Runner-up in the 2nd Manawatu Chinese Speech Contest

Translated by Shirley Ghozalli. Edited by Moira Blake

Tee Tran delivered a speech about the soft drink L&P	Sinit Palanuvej maintained a calm appearance as she gave a speech about the value of traditional culture	Akina Shimakage told a Japanese rakugo (comedy) in Chinese language
The 3 competitors with their certificates of participation	Akina Shimakage was chosen as the runner-up in the Chinese Speech Contest	The competitors with their lecturer, Ling Guan, after the award ceremony

On 5th October, the 2nd Manawatu Chinese Speech Contest was held at the Palmerston North Convention Centre. This annual contest was started last year to encourage the learning of Chinese in the Manawatu community as well as to give an opportunity to New Zealand raised Chinese descendants to deliver speeches in Chinese. Three IPC students took up the challenge at this year's contest.

The three participating students were Tee Tran (from Vietnam, a 2005 student), Sinit Palanuvej (from Thailand, a 2008 student), and Akina Shimakage (from Japan, a 2006 student), who are studying Chinese in the Chinese class lectured by Ling Guan, an IPC lecturer. Competing in the "Adults who have studied Chinese language for less than two years" category, they had to speak about their chosen topics in Chinese in less than 5 minutes. The judges gave points to each participant based on the usage of gestures, speech content and fluency.

Tee Tran chose New Zealand's famous L&P soft drink as his topic. From his bag, he produced an L&P bottle and brandished it about as he spoke, with plenty of humour and both body and hand gestures, inviting laughter from the audience. Following his speech, Sinit Palanuvej made a speech about her experience of being brought up in a Chinese household in Thailand and the value of traditional culture. She assumed a calm appearance throughout her speech.

Wearing a kimono and as the last speaker in the category, Akina Shimakage told the audience about a Japanese rakugo (comedy) in Chinese. The story tells about a group of villagers who were invited to a celebrated person's wedding ceremony. Upon receiving the invitation, the villagers asked a teacher to teach them etiquette. Seeing that the teacher had some beads of rice grain sticking on his face, the villagers thought that it was a part of the etiquette and followed suit. The teacher, who accidentally had the rice grain sticking on his face, got angry and beat the villagers. Consequently, the villagers thought that the beating was part of the etiquette and started to beat each other. The spectators around them enjoyed the resulting true-to-life entertainment.

At the award ceremony, Akina Shimakage won the runner-up award of the contest although she only started to learn Chinese 8 months ago. "I joined the contest because I thought it would be a good experience for me, and doing the public speaking in Chinese would build my self-confidence as well. I didn't expect to win so when my name was called, I was very surprised. I'm so thrilled!"

IPC lecturer Ling Guan commented "In this contest, Akina's Chinese pronunciation became astonishingly good. I was very glad when the three of them expressed their enthusiasm for participating in the contest."

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