Flagship Students Coast Past the Competition in New York, Will Set Sail for Beijing this Summer (By WZ)

Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures students Joshua Lotz and James Wilson both competed this past weekend at the New York qualifier for the 6th Annual China Bridge competition for non-native students of Chinese. Both students of the Chinese Flagship Program (a highly intensive Chinese language program here at OSU), Joshua, a third-year Bio-Chemistry major, and James, a first-year Chinese language graduate student, competed against five other students from around the northeastern United States including Princeton, Colombia, University of Pennsylvania and Hunter College. The competition consisted of three different sections: a three-minute speech, an interview wherein one of twenty questions on Chinese history, culture and/or language was asked, as well as, a talent portion- all conducted in Chinese!

Joshua performed a moving piece on his experience with underprivileged youth in Qinghai, China for his speech, and James spoke on how martial arts has helped his study of the Chinese language. Both students did exceedingly well in the interview/ question- and- answer portion. For the talent portion, Joshua performed an entertaining except from the famous story “Wu Song and the tiger.” His performance involved multiple characters that he distinguished superbly with voice and bodily variations and mannerisms. He was greatly inspired for this competition by Eric Sheppard, a Ph.D. candidate of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures who has for a number of years studied and performed traditional Chinese story telling. James demonstrated his ability with the Nine-Section Chain Whip, a flexible four-foot chain that is a traditional Chinese martial arts weapon. His exciting martial arts performance, which included numerous high difficulty moves, led the judges to award him the “Outstanding Talent” award.

The judges narrowed the competition to three with one first place and two second place prizes. Both Joshua and James received a second place enabling them to continue on to the next round of the competition this summer in Beijing. The Beijing competition is the overall finals of a worldwide competition that hundreds compete for entry into. One of the perks of winning in New York is that these two students will have their plane tickets, room- and- board, as well as, domestic traveling paid for them by the competition organizers on the way to and while in Beijing for the 6th Annual Chinese Bridge final this summer.

One of the biggest reasons that both Joshua and James finished in the top three is due to the copious amounts of practice and instruction both of them received. Joshua and James had help in the writing, editing and practicing of their speeches, as well as, in proper etiquette for the competition. James received an immense amount of help from his Chinese mentor, Sally Yang, who recently received her Master’s Degree from the College of Education. However, the leading coaching and majority of the help came from Foreign Language Center’s Huanzhen Zhao of the Chinese Flagship Program. Every year, not only does she take care of mentoring the student who will compete, but she also has been charged with the task of arranging the event as well as specialized help for competitors. It is really no surprise these students did well when we consider who Huanzhen Zhao has prepared for this competition before. She has helped six students finish in the top of the New York competition since 2003 and has two World Champions to her name in Pat McAloon (2004 World champion) and Abbey Southerland (2006 World Champion). Hopefully this summer she will add another name to that list.

Joshua and James would like to thank both the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Chinese Flagship Program for their support and guidance. They would like to especially thank Mari Noda, and Galal Walker all for the support these years. A special thanks also goes to Li Minru for the help in the past. Without the encouragement of the afore mentioned, these students would not have been able to make it to New York, let alone finish as well as they did.