Look who's talking

All the Chinese-speaking foreign stars featured in this article insisted on conducting the interview in Mandarin, even though they knew it was meant for an English-language paper. Mandarin is what comes naturally to them these days but it didn't at first.

Manal Abbalaziz learns new Chinese characters every day, only to forget it the next morning. Nguyen Thi Phuong Mai sometimes fails to make a clear distinction between the first and the fourth tones. Given to writing lengthy articles in Chinese, Park Seulji often finds herself digressing from the main drift. Despite these difficulties Manal, Nguyen and Park, all in their 20s, are still grappling with, they are winners.

At a recent Chinese-speaking contest, they finished among the top 10, beating 320 foreign students from 65 countries. The 2009 Star of Foreign Students in Beijing contest was held by www.bjchinese.bjedu.cn, a new portal for learning Mandarin and Chinese culture launched by Beijing Education Bureau.