WELLINGTON, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Teachers and students at Whanganui High School on New Zealand's North Island were not surprised to hear that Lulu Dufty, a 12th grader, had won the Oceania championship at the global finals of the 19th "Chinese Bridge" Chinese proficiency competition for foreign secondary school students.
The school has long been dedicated to Chinese teaching with impressive results.
Lulu and four other contestants outcompeted their regional rivals in the continental championships and advanced to the global finals. The global finals of the 19th "Chinese Bridge" Chinese proficiency competition for foreign secondary school students were held on Sept. 21 in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin.
Her teachers and peers see Lulu as excelling both academically and in character, with strong communication skills, a love for music, and an enduring passion for the Chinese language and culture.
In 2023, she won the runner-up prize and the best talent award in the junior high category of the 16th "Chinese Bridge" competition for the Wellington region. She went on to win the championship in the junior high category for the Wellington region in 2024. In 2025, she advanced to the high school category and competed once again, and she was named a Youth Ambassador for New Zealand Chinese Language Week the same year.
Lulu visited China when she was a child, but it was only in recent years that she began studying Chinese more earnestly, driven by the goal of participating in the "Chinese Bridge" competition. "It was incredibly encouraging to see everyone speak Chinese so fluently, so I was motivated to keep learning," she said. "I hope that one day I can also speak Chinese just as fluently."
Lulu's victory as the Oceania champion was no accident, as her alma mater had achieved remarkable success in the "Chinese Bridge" competitions. In 2020, ninth-grader Reina Jones won first place in the junior high category of the New Zealand national "Chinese Bridge" speech contest. Subsequently, she secured the championship in the advanced high school category.
In 2025, Billie Dufty, Lulu's sister, won third prize in the secondary school category at the 18th "Chinese Bridge" global finals, and the Chinese Embassy in New Zealand held a reception to honor her and other winners.
Chinese has been taught at Whanganui High School for more than 20 years, and the Confucius Classroom was introduced into the school in 2014 by the Confucius Institute at Victoria University of Wellington. In 2024, the school became one of seven schools in the country to be honored with the "Chinese Language Innovation Award."
At the school, Chinese is taught from Year 9 through to Year 13, giving students the opportunity to continue language learning throughout their secondary school years. The support is also extended to primary and intermediate schools in the wider Whanganui community, making the school a hub for learning Chinese language and culture.
"Another achievement I am particularly proud of is the way we have connected Chinese language learning with the wider community through cultural events," said Ding Xinguo, a Chinese teacher in charge of the Confucius Classroom at the school.
A range of Chinese cultural activities had been held, including lanterns on the Awa, Chinese cultural celebrations, dragon boat racing events, Chinese music concerts, calligraphy activities and Chinese New Year celebrations.
"These events give people who may never have studied Chinese the opportunities to experience Chinese culture in a fun and meaningful way," Ding said. "They also gave our students the opportunities to use Chinese outside the classroom and become cultural ambassadors for our school."
The Chinese Language Week was first launched in 2014 in New Zealand, becoming another similar initiative along with the Maori Language Week and the Pacific Island Language Weeks in the country.
Chinese has been taught in New Zealand for many decades, with school-level provision expanding significantly from the late 2000s, and learner numbers increasing from fewer than 2,000 in 2008 to a peak of 6,368 in 2020, before easing to around 5,500 in 2024, said Rebecca Needham, program manager of New Zealand Chinese Language Week.
Chinese is now one of the five most-studied languages at New Zealand high schools, she noted, adding that Chinese Mandarin remains recognized within New Zealand's learning languages curriculum, and the Ministry of Education is currently developing refreshed curriculum content for Chinese alongside other languages.
In 2025, the New Zealand Chinese Language Week Trust, together with the University of Auckland and the New Zealand Association of Language Teachers, held a national forum on language learning. Its principal recommendations included making second-language learning a core curriculum requirement in Years 7-10 and developing a comprehensive national languages policy.
"From our perspective, Chinese should form part of that wider national commitment to building multilingual and internationally capable young New Zealanders," said Needham. ■
