On the 5th of the fifth month of the Lunar calendar, a festival is celebrated by the Chinese called the Dragon Boat Festival (Duan Wu Jie). This festival started because a great patriot poet, Qu Yuan, was so disgusted by the corruption of his mother country, the Chu State, that he decided to end his life by flinging himself into the Miluo River. When people heard about his death, they were dismayed and hurriedly raced with their boats to find his body but were unable to do so. The people then decided to throw zongzi, eggs and other food into the river to feed the fish and to preserve Qu Yuan's body. Since then, people try to remember Qu Yuan by holding dragon boat races, eating zongzi and other activities.
Among these activities, Aston school decided to hold an English Speech Competition to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival yesterday at Xianyang Bell Tower. The event was from 6:00-9:00pm. We were there at around 5:30pm and the place was already buzzing with activities as kids and parents prepare while our Aston booths invite people to watch and at the same time, encourage them to go to our school.
There were 15 contestants, ranging from the ages of 4-16 years old. The competition was divided into 3 categories: prepared speech/self-introduction, talent and the question and answer portion. Being one of the judges, we were asked to prepare questions that would fit each contestant's level.
Here's a video of some contestants giving their prepared speeches. Aren't they cute?
They were also asked to give a short performance as part of their talent portion. Some danced, others recited poems and some even sang songs.
These kids were quite competitive that we had to make sure not to give them points lower than 7.
The teacher in me was itching to correct all the wrong spellings made on this sheet of paper.
In the end, all were awarded with prizes and all of them went home happy.
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