Our school held an English speaking competition where the students were given 3 minutes to speak about whatever they liked. There were 37 contestants and we were "lucky" enough to be among the judges. It was held in an auditorium and in typical Chinese fashion the audience didn't once shutup to listen to the speakers, the microphone level was just increased. It was a long night.

Some of the speeches were OK, most were Chinese poems directly translated to English and made little to no sense. And a lot were flowery about self improvement and "where there is a will there is a way". One student's speech was miles in front others and of course he won.

May is the month for speech competitions through out China. Our American friends in Hunan had one the night after ours. Cheating is rife in China and one student got up and explained in detail how and why the students cheat. The American panel of judges thought it was priceless however their Chinese counterparts were not so impressed.