On May 22th , the 11th Chinese Bridge-Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students-- Pakistani Zone Qualifiers was successfully held in National University of Modern Languages(NUML). Chinese ambassador Mr. Liu Jian and cultural counselor Mr. Zhang Yingbao watched the competition accompanied by Rector Mr. Masood Hassan and Director General Mr. Azam Jamal of NUML. Mr. Azam Jamal started the competition with a welcome speech. He extended his warm welcome to all the coming guests and wished all the contestants would achieve desirable results.

The theme of this year competition is "My Chinese Dream". The competition consists of four sections: written test, topic speech, questions answering and Chinese talent show. After months of preparing and previous selections, 8 participants had been selected to compete for the honor to represent Pakistan to participate the final competition held in China.

As for the judge panel, Prof .Lei Weizhong ,Director of Chinese Department of NUML, Prof. Misba, Chinese Department of NUML, Mr. Haseeb, manager of Pakistan Askali Bank, Mr . Safraz, manager of ICBC Islamabad Branch, had been invited. After intense competition, judges had a comprehensive overview of every participant��s performance and gave accordant assessment. At last, Waqas Ali, who is a Sophomore of Chinese Department of NUML won the first prize with impressive performance and he will represent Pakistan to participate the final competition held in Changsha, Hunan, China. The rest 7 participant share the second and third prizes.

Chinese ambassador Mr. Liu Jian presented the first prize and concluded the competition with a speech. As he put it:" there is a word "Qingchun" in Chinese which literally means youth and spring. People often relate youth to spring because both of them represent hope, animation and passion. He also urged those Pakistani Chinese-speaking youth to affect people around them and help them to study Chinese, know about China and enhance China-Pakistan friendship. In the end, the ambassador expressed gratitude to the competition organizers: Confucius Institute in Islamabad and Chinese Department of NUML.

The competition was hosted by the Chinese embassy in Pakistan and organized by CII and NUML Chinese Department. What was worth mentioning was that for the first time there were female contestants in the final competition in Pakistan. Furthermore, female participants accounted for half of the seats. It has never happened before since the "Chinese Bridge" landed in Pakistan. This shows that Chinese learners group are expanding and more and more people get access to Chinese in Pakistan.