The North Atlanta Chinese Program hosted its annual speech and writing competition on March 8, in which students display their talent in Mandarin, China’s dominant language. For the event, participating students also paid homage to Chinese culture and history through varied creative paths including artwork, speech and writing.

Participants ranged from freshman all the way to seniors. Performances also took place by each grade, where students performed a rendition of a famous Chinese song for the audience. The students had the ability to show what they’ve learned and prepared for months in front of friends, family, and faculty in attendance. Senior Taylor Hunter, who has taken Chinese since freshman year, loves how the program gets a night to display all that they can do with the language. “Being a part of this program has given me so many opportunities through North Atlanta,” she said. “Tonight was a portrayal of everything we know and have learned through the Chinese language and culture.”

The Chinese program is a growing language at North Atlanta, with more students in the program than ever before. Teacher Zhao Lao Shi has seen the program grow from very few classes to a plethora of different levels ranging from level 1 to IB ab initio. “More and more students are becoming interested in Chinese, and it’s so exciting to see the passion and love that the students have for the culture and the language,” she said. “We want this program to show the school as well as the community how advanced the North Atlanta Chinese Program is.”

Winners were selected at the end of the program by a judge from the Wesleyan School in Peachtree Corners. The winners for the competition for level 1 were freshmen Douglas Dumont for speech and James Bloodworth for writing. In addition, the winners from the level 2 competition are sophomores Maya Dickson for writing and  Aidan Moore for speech. For IB level 3, the winners was junior Emma Shaw for speech and Fiona Liu for writing. Wrapping up the show, the winners for IB level 4 were seniors Gwyneth Smith for speech and Mac Bloodworth for writing.

After a night of learning more about the unique language of Mandarin Chinese as well as Chinese culture, it was evident that North Atlanta is an up and coming Chinese program to keep an eye on.