He came to China for the first time at the age of 8, and later became the European champion of the 14th “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students. British youth Cameron Patterson (Chinese name Kang Ke) has been paying much attention to China. He said that China’s development in recent years has amazed him, and “Life in China has taught me a lot”. Let’s listen to his China story together!
Kangke’s hometown is Cardiff, the capital of Wales, England. In 2003, at the age of 8, he came to China with his parents. From the very beginning, his father decided to send him to an ordinary school instead of an international school, so that he could familiarize himself with the Chinese language environment as soon as possible and truly experience Chinese culture. With the improvement of his Chinese language level, Kang Ke gradually settled into the class and became friends with classmates.
During his ten years in China, Kang Ke lived and studied in Datong, Lianyungang, Qingdao, Zhanjiang and Shanghai. He thinks that this decade has changed his life. Kang Ke has been interested in physics since he was a child. He is currently a doctoral student in Space and Planetary Physics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. It was a Chinese teacher who arose his interest in scientific exploration in his junior high school. When he was in Zhanjiang, the physics teacher’s experiments deeply attracted him. With the help of his math teacher, Kang Ke’s math grades improved from failing to pass the exams to getting nearly full marks, laying a solid mathematical foundation for his future physics research.
Kang Ke participating in the 14th “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students
After returning to the UK, Kang Ke actively participated in the “Chinese Bridge” competition. In 2015, he won the first prize in the UK division. Later, he won the European champion in the global finals and entered the third round of “peak showdown”. Although he missed the championship by a slight disadvantage, his excellent performance was highly praised by the judges and the audience.
Kang Ke said that the principal of his primary school in Cardiff was quite puzzled by his father’s decision to take him to China, but his father firmly believed that China would have great development potential, and mastering Chinese would be helpful for his future development. After witnessing the great changes in China, Kang Ke deeply understood his father’s words. He said, for example, when he was a child, it took his father over 30 hours to reach Zhanjiang from Lianyungang by train. Today, China’s high-speed rail is not only fast, but also very comfortable. In recent years, every time he comes to China, he is overwhelmed by the changes that have taken place in the cities where he used to live.
At the same time, Kang Ke’s experience also gave him the opportunity to gain a deeper appreciation of the lives and cultures of the Chinese and British people, enabling him to understand more thoroughly the importance of cross-cultural communication.
Kang Ke said that he is willing to be a bridge of cultural exchange between China and Britain and is committed to helping more British students to explore their own China stories. In fact, he has been playing this role since he was a child. During the summer and winter vacations as a child, Kang Ke returned to his primary school in Cardiff many times to share with his classmates what it was like to live and study in China. The Welsh media has also praised him for being an “ambassador of British culture” at such a young age.
From high school to university, Kang Ke has organized several cultural exchange activities and has traveled to many places in the UK to tell his own China story, inspire British students to learn Chinese and encourage them to become ambassadors of friendship between the two countries.
As a British person who grew up in China and knows China, he expects to help British people “get rid of stereotypes about China” and understand China more deeply through his efforts, said Kang Ke.
original source: http://www.chinese.cn/page/#/pcpage/article?id=1197&page=1
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