Taiwan's Foreign Students Face Off in Mandarin Speech Competition

TaiwanPlus News

Foreign students studying Mandarin in Taiwan have the chance to show of their skills in a Mandarin speech competition. That's as fewer students choose to go to China for language study.

Transcript

00:00At this Mandarin speech competition, foreign students in Taiwan use wit, humor, and their

00:06singing voices to impress a panel of judges.

00:15Those with good enough language skills can win prizes of up to 600 U.S. dollars.

00:20And competitors from 17 countries have a wide range of reasons to learn the language.

00:26I thought if I'm going to live in a different country, you know, I think it's respectful

00:30that you should be able to at least speak the language.

00:32So I decided to come here to learn, to improve my quality of life here and make it easier

00:36for myself.

00:37Actually, I belong to the diplomatic services of India.

00:43So our government decided to send a few of us to learn Chinese.

00:47Most say they joined the competition for the challenge, though a few may have ulterior

00:52motives for joining.

00:53Don't tell my teacher to skip class.

00:56Whatever their reasons, they're taking part in a tradition that goes back more than 50

01:01years.

01:02As this decades-old competition shows, Taiwan has long been a destination for those wanting

01:07to learn Mandarin.

01:08And its popularity is growing as fewer international students choose to study in China.

01:14Last year, more than 36,000 foreign students came to Taiwan to learn Mandarin.

01:19That's a slight increase over pre-pandemic levels.

01:23As for China, there's no officially published number of foreign language students.

01:28But since the COVID-19 pandemic, numbers of foreign students in China have dropped as

01:32geopolitical tensions have grown.

01:35For example, for the United States, the number of students studying in China has dropped

01:40from more than 25,000 about a decade ago to only around 700 last year.

01:45Teachers in Taiwan say there may be reasons for that.

01:48Some of my students have been to both countries, and they feel more at ease in Taiwan.

01:54They can freely say what they want to say, and it's easier to live there, because Taiwan

02:00is smaller.

02:01Learning a foreign language, especially Mandarin, is hard.

02:05And these language learners have traveled across the world and volunteered to take on

02:09an even greater level of difficulty.

02:12They stand to gain a sense of accomplishment, and maybe even some cash.

02:16Hank Hsu and Chris Gorin for Taiwan Plus.

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