Chongqing- Lucas Deckers, the newly announced world champion of the 19th Chinese Bridge Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students, talks about his experience of learning Chinese and his passion for traveling in this exclusive interview with iChongqing. He's currently studying Chinese and Philosophy at Chongqing Normal University under a government scholarship program.
The news of him winning the global championship of the "Chinese Bridge” competition came as quite a surprise to him, said Lucas. "I remember that moment was kind of weird because I was just in my room by myself, and I couldn't really celebrate with my family until a day later... I needed some time to realize that I won."
Actually, Lucas had a very good track record of winning the preliminary rounds and semifinals of the competition before entering the final stage, even though he didn't really have that much time to prepare for this. He signed up for the competition on short notice of his teacher's recommendation and received a lot of help and support from his teachers and his Chinese girlfriend.
A stage screen of the Chinese Bridge competition with Lucas on the center announces him as the new world champion.
Since the first launch in 2002, the Chinese Bridge competitions have been successfully held for 19 editions, attracting more than 1.4 million young students from the world’s over 150 countries to demonstrate their Chinese language skills and knowledge about the culture and history of China.
After almost 20 years of development, the “Chinese Bridge” has become the most well-known and prestigious brand of Chinese Speaking contest among overseas students. It has developed several separate programs for different age groups and with different objectives, such as the Chinese Proficiency Competition for College Students, the Chinses Proficiency Competition for Secondary School Students, a global conference, a summer camp, and a headmaster visiting program.
As a middle child from a well-off family in Belgium, Lucas was able to travel to a lot of places with his parents from a young age. He's only 22 years old now, yet he has already been to 25 countries. Most of the time, he could choose to travel alone or with friends in between school semesters after earning enough money doing student part-time jobs, just so that he wouldn't have to balance study, work, and his travel plans.
"I've changed completely because of traveling and studying Chinese in the last three years, I started looking at the world differently," said Lucas when recalling his past travel and working experiences.
When he was eighteen years old, he decided to study Synology at Leuven University in Belgium because of his long-held desire to see the world and travel to a faraway place like China. "That's what attracted me to study Chinese in the first place, but as I started it, my passion for China grew really fast. I suddenly started to like everything about Chinese culture," he said.
Unlike those who often consider Chinese as one of the most difficult oriental languages to learn, Lucas seems to be quite comfortable with his studying regime. At first, it was "quite easy" for him to learn and use Chinese every day at the university level, or "a really big improvement in a small amount of time," as he could call it. But now it gets harder for him to go beyond intermediary to advanced levels. "I don't need to think about grammar and vocabulary, now I need to think about cultural stuff like classical Chinese writings."
A screenshot of his personal BiliBili channel "Lu Ke Si Yi"
Lucas expressed gratitude toward his Chinese fans on the YouTube-like video-sharing platform BiliBili, especially those who have been following him since day one. He has been posting vlog videos under his personal channel named "Lu Ke Si Yi," a clever wordplay and reference to the four-character Chinese set phrase "Bu Ke Si Yi," which means unimaginable, and has been gradually gaining more influence.
He also confessed that he'd been waiting for an opportunity to come back to Chongqing for almost a year, but as Belgium is currently undergoing the second wave of the COVID-19 epidemic, the hopes of him returning to China any time sooner are still hard to say.
"We had our first peak, and now there's the second peak, we are in lockdown again... We can not go out, and restaurants are closed," said Lucas. "But we're slowly getting better, I hope to return to China as soon as possible, but I'm guessing it's won't be before February, it may not even be before summer."
"But one thing is sure, when China reopens its borders to foreign students, I will immediately go there, because I can't wait," added Lucas at the end.