Chinese Culture Competition Latest News !!!
Developing Virtue Schools Qualify to Compete in the 2005 National Chinese Culture Competition

The students at Instilling Goodness Elementary School and Developing Virtue Secondary School study Chinese from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Chinese classes are offered from the very beginning level to advanced levels equivalent to junior high or high school Chinese in Taiwan. The high school curriculum includes six levels of Chinese. Each of these yearlong courses - Chinese I to Chinese VI - is approved by the University of California as fulfillment of their foreign language requirement.

Each year, our students participate in two Chinese competitions, the Chinese Academic Contest and the Chinese Culture Competition, which resembles a Jeopardy game and tests students on Chinese literature and philosophy, history, geography, science, language, and common knowledge. When training the students, we guide them to learn for the sake of learning, not for the sake of winning the competition. The most valuable part of the process is the knowledge gained, not the end result. Due to this non-competitive spirit and perhaps their meditation practice, our students showed themselves to be amongst the most cool-headed and light-hearted of all the contestants.

This year, the Northern California Chinese Culture Competition was held on Saturday, May 7, at the Calvary Assembly Church in Milpitas. There were eleven teams from different schools, which competed in three rounds. In this intense and rather nerve-wracking competition, the Developing Virtue Boys and Girls Schools´ team members both made it to the finals. In the finals, the Girls School took second place and the Boys School came in fourth. Both schools are qualified to compete in the national competition to be held this summer.

This year, the Girls School´s team included an Euro-American student, a first in the history of the Chinese culture competition. This student, who has been studying Chinese and living as a boarding student at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas for nearly five years, was able to understand the rather sophisticated questions, which amazed the president of the Association of Northern California Chinese Schools. Her mother, who was present in the audience but did not understand a word of the competition, was even more nervous than the contestants and would cheer enthusiastically whenever our team scored. We could hardly believe it when both teams did so well that they made it to the finals and did well. This was probably the best Mother´s Day present her daughter could give her. [Note: This student graduated and is now studying Chinese at Reed College in Portland, OR.]