I was in China for the finals of the Chinese Bridges international competition for university students of Chinese in early August. I was amazed by the language and drama skills of the top 12, who performed to an audience of 100 million TV viewers.

But I’d only heard about, hadn’t seen, one of the pre-finals “tests” the students had to take, making it through Hunan TV’s water maze. Now I think learning to speak Chinese looks easy, compared to this!

Video is from the web site of Li-mu, who is my son, aka Liam Bates, but who was also one of the three top winners, taking the prize for “eloquence”. I’m not too sure how eloquent he was while doing the maze to shouts and a clock counting down!

Allow time for the video to load. The “test” to get through the maze starts after about 40 seconds of video.

And here’s a link to TSR’s interview with Liam, in French. The Swiss public TV station sent a team from Beijing to film the finals and interview the local lad.