At the preliminary contest in South Africa of the 11th Chinese Language Proficiency Competition, which was held at Stellenbosch University on 5 May, UCT's students of Chinese reaped almost half of the total prizes, a remarkable achievement for our hard-working students and a considerable success of the young and slim Confucius Institute at UCT.

The contest was held at Boland College, Stellenbosch. A total of 23 students Stellenbosch University, Rhodes University and University of Cape Town participated in the competition. They are all students taking Chinese language courses either offered or supported by the Confucius Institutes at the universities. Over 150 people, including some parents of the participating students, listened to the speeches and watched the performance with great interest.

Mr. Tong Defa, deputy Consul General of the Chinese Consulate at Cape Town, Mr. Wei Yanggen, first secretary of education at the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria, Prof. Doug Rawlings, Acting Deputy Rector of the U. of Stellenbosch, and Mr. Jeppie from the Ministry of Education, South Africa, attended the competition.

UCT sent 8 students to join the rest from the other two universities and also UNISA. Some of our students had only started first year Chinese in February, 2012. Through about 3 hours of demonstrating their Chinese proficiency, 9 awards were given out. UCT's Rachel Anderson won the second prize, which qualifies her to go to Changsha, Hunan in China to observe the Final of the Chinese Bridge Competition in late July, 2012. Birte Toussaint, a grad of Engeering, won the third prize, which qualifies her for a one-year Confucius Institute Scholarship. Tracy Semmelink and Hana Petersen, both first-year Chinese students, won the Best Talent Show Awards. It is quite a momentous success, considering the fact that UCT only started its Chinese courses at SLL, with the assistance of the Confucius Institute, in 2011.

It is generally agreed among the judges that the students' level of proficiency in Chinese is higher than last year. For contestants from UCT, many speeches are no longer scrambles of Chinese words and phrases, but rather well-written passages narrating their Chinese dreams. The seemingly insurmountable obstacle of tones is easier overcome in some good speeches where the speakers demonstrate their perfect pronunciation and intonation in spoken Chinese. In the part of talent show, our students impressed the audience and convinced the judges by their singing, dancing, and painting Chinese pieces. Especially in singing, the words were uttered correctly to the tune with full force and right rhythm that it sounded exactly like the original singing by Chinese singers. No wonder that the MC joked that the Chinese culture is Karaoke.

Without the credit-bearing courses, the Confucius Institute won't be able to select so many talented students to participated in the competition and win such a bundle of awards. We hope that, judging from the pace of progress of our students (last year, we won two third prizes), it is possible that UCT students will be representing South Africa to go to the Final of the Chinese Bridge Competition in 2013. To guarantee this, the Confucius Institute is firm in continuing to offer credit bearing courses through SLL, and will strive to raise the quality of teaching to a much higher level. It will also offer some Confucius Institute courses to the public. Within a short time, UCT will be the center for Chinese in Western Cape.