Before the arrival of the Lunar New Year, the Office of International Affairs (OIA) organized a creative “2024 Year of the Dragon Short Film Competition” for local and international students at NPUST. The competition called for teams consisting of both Taiwanese and foreign students to record creative “Year of the Dragon” New Year’s greetings in Chinese and English. A total of nine teams created videos which were posted on the OIA “fan page” where they could be viewed and voted for using “likes”.
The videos were promoted on the fans page from New Year’s Eve on through to the Lantern Festival (Feb.7~26), during which time more than 1,600 likes were accumulated. The teams actively leveraged their network influence and worked hard to promote their videos, hoping to rack up the most “thumbs up” in the allotted time. On March 4, the OIA announced the top three teams, all of which had foreign students from the Department of Tropical Agriculture. Rolissa Ballantyne from St. Vincent and her Taiwanese teammate Yi-Chen Liu from the Department of Management Information Systems took the top spot. Second place went to Indonesian student Dedi Lumbantoruan and his Taiwanese teammate Chen-lin Yang, from the Department of Plant Medicine; and third place was snatched up by Kewalin Kongngern from Thailand and her Taiwanese teammate Yu-sheng Chiu of the Department of Biotechnology. Two other groups were selected for special awards. The first was a team that included Indonesian student Aprodita from the Department of Tropical Agriculture and teammate Cheng-Han Kuo from the Department of Vehicle Engineering; and the second was a team comprising Malaysian student Han Li Yap and teammate Chun-Wei Wang, both from the Department of Aquaculture.
The video content was diverse and creative, with a variety of New Year’s greetings presented in Chinese, English and even Taiwanese. It was amazing to see so many foreign students speak Chinese or Taiwanese so fluently and to even make “plays on the words” as they shared their “Year of the Dragon” messages. For example, Rolissa Ballantyne used words that sound like the Chinese word for dragon (lóng) to express the idea of “prospering” and “receiving” good fortune in the new year. Taking a different approach, Dedi Lumbantoruan used a variety Chinese expressions and idioms that include the word “dragon” to compose a message of encouragement; and Kewalin Kongngern created a rhyme that incorporated the word dragon to wish everyone a bright future.
The competition helped promote interaction and cooperation between local students the participating foreign students who came from 6 countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam and St. Vincent. The goal was to encourage Chinese and English language exchange while giving students a chance to deepen mutual friendship through team work.
The organizers of the competition were also grateful to two groups that made special contributions, including two teachers from the NPUST International Program in Animal Vaccine Technology, namely Thi Thu Dung Doan (of Vietnam) and Hsing-Chieh Wu (of Taiwan), who shared a video message, and An-an and Rong-rong, two kindergarteners from the on-campus kindergarten who recorded a cute and lively New Year’s blessing.
