Two undergraduates from the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, Michael Andreano and David Berry, made it to the final round and were among 14 finalists in the Jiangsu Cup Chinese Speech Contest last month. 

Held annually at George Washington University, the contest is open to undergraduate students studying Chinese in colleges and universities in the greater Washington metropolitan area.

Andreano is an East Asian Studies major and received a bronze award in the advanced group. Berry is a Chinese Language and Literature major and received a bronze award in the intermediate group. The two will receive full tuition to study Chinese at Nanjing University in either the fall 2013 or spring 2014 semesters.

Their Chinese instructors, Hui Zhu and Jie Yuan, were there to cheer them on and take photos.

The contestants came from George Washington, American, George Mason and Georgetown universities, as well as U.Va. Participants cannot be native speakers of Chinese and must have spent at least 280 hours studying college-level Chinese classes or the equivalent.

The 2012 speech contest was sponsored by the Jiangsu International Cultural Exchange Center, Nanjing University in China and the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University.