School Project - St Thomas More SLC, UK

ST THOMAS MORE LANGUAGE COLLEGE, CHELSEA, UK 

At our school you can first try Chinese at special workshops. If you like it you can join the after-school club.

At our workshop we learnt all about Beijing and the Olympics that are starting soon. It will be funny watching them on TV knowing the names of the mascots and what their names mean. We also saw some Beijing Opera (Jīngjù in pinyin). Jīngjù is a special type of theatre that is very old. It is very colourful and beautiful.

Our teacher talked to us about China and we learnt some Chinese phrases.  We had the chance to write Chinese characters using a proper Chinese calligraphy brush. It was strange to have to hold the brush in a different way to get the strokes right. We learnt how to count to 10 in Chinese as well as learning how to use chopsticks for eating Chinese food. Then we had to do both at the same time and not laugh!

To find out more about what we learnt please listen to the sound files below.  Some pictures of our calligraphy work and the Beijing opera are shown. Calligraphy takes lots of practice.