Celebrate Tenth Competition "The Chinese Bridge"

SANTO DOMINGO. The students of International Language Center of the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (IIC-INTEC), Brady Santiago Jeronimus and Gisselt Altagracia Peña Mariñez were the winners of the first place in the El Puente Chino Mandarin Language Skills Competition, in the Secondary and University categories, respectively.

During this year's contest, which had as its central theme "One world, one family", the second place winners were the students María Isabel Paulino Sánchez, from the CII-INTEC, at the secondary level, and Eida Álvarez del Orbe, from the language school of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), at the university level. All winners will be recommended to the organizing committee of El Puente Chino, which will select one of them to represent the country in the final competition to be held in the People's Republic of China.

The representative for the Dominican Republic will receive as a prize a full Mandarin scholarship in the People's Republic of China, while the other winners, who have not been selected for the final, will attend the world competition as guests, with all expenses paid.

When assessing the competence, the coordinator of the CEII-INTEC, Gracham Rodríguez, expressed “For INTEC it is a great privilege to have the involvement of the Chinese Government during these 10 years through the Mandarin program. As a celebration of this decade, we will further strengthen the ties of our collaboration, with the incorporation of the Confucius Institute to the INTEC campus ”.

The tenth version of the contest, organized by the Government of People's China, through its Office of Commercial Development in the Dominican Republic, and hosted by the INTEC International Language Center, was a display of rhythms, art, music and other colorful elements of ancient Chinese culture.

During the event, attendees enjoyed the participants' impressive Mandarin language skills during a personal introduction, a speech, and a display of their knowledge of Chinese culture; in addition, at the university level, they responded to questions from the judges.

Among the attendees, we highlight the presence of the representative of the Office of Commercial Development in the Dominican Republic, Fu Xinrong, the Rector of INTEC, Rolando Guzmán and the vice-rector for Research and Relations of INTEC, Víctor Gómez Valenzuela.

The jury was made up of the president of the Dominican Association of Friendship with China, the honorary president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic and two teachers of Mandarin from the Dominican-Chinese Cultural Institute.

The Chinese Bridge is a platform for Dominican students of the Mandarin language to show their skills, offering them the opportunity to learn new cultural behaviors that increase their enthusiasm to continue learning about Chinese culture. The competition has been held in the country since 2008.

What is the contest about?

The scenario of the competition was the Julio Ravelo Room of the INTEC Fountain, the participants were evaluated by:

• Skill of the Chinese language: skills in oral communication through a brief presentation of your personal and professional profile.

• Knowledge about the People's Republic of China, through a discourse related to the learning of Mandarin or related to a topic of interest for Chinese culture.

• Presentation of an ability characteristic of Chinese culture: songs, dances, folk arts, acrobatics, Chinese musical instruments, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese paintings, paper cuts or others.