Owen May-Jones Won the Third Prize and the Most Popular Contestant in the 21st Chinese Bridge

On 27th June, the 2022 Chinese Bridge Chinese Bridge -- Chinese Proficiency Competition UK Regional Final was held in London. Owen May-Jones, from University of Brighton/ Confucius Institute at the University of Southampton won the Third Prize and the most popular contestant awards.

Chinese Bridge is the most important competition in the Mandarin language-learning field. The theme of this year’s competition was “one world, one family”. The competition was divided into two parts - the first half a 3-minute speech and 2-minute quiz, the second part a 3-minute talent show as well as a set of impromptu questions.

Owen May-Jones gave a speech on ’The perilous Westerly travels of the Tang Dynasty buddhist monk Xuanzang’ in which he talked about the impact of Xuanzang’s 17-year, round journey to India in terms of cultural exchange and the strong mark it made on the history of globalisation. And how it served as a reminder of the enormous potential benefits of cultural exchange  …. He also sang the song the South of the Southern Mountain as his talented show.  Finally, Owen May-Jones got the third prize and the most popular contestant, he will be the 2022 Ambassador of Chinese Culture and Tourism Promotion in the UK.

In his acceptance speech Owen expressed his sincere gratitude to the audience for their support

Owen May-Jones is the student of Digital music and sound arts, University of Brighton, also a student of Confucius Institute at the University of Southampton. He has been learning Chinese for 4 years. He loves Chinese culture, especially Chinese music - classical music and modern. His favourite Chinese singer is Lijun Deng. In the future, he will continue learning Chinese at CI.