Day 12: Study Partners

The next two days were typical days of class, although in the afternoon we also met with our Chinese study partners: five students of Lanzhou University, from the Arts and English Departments. We were divided into groups and then assigned a study partner, ours was William, a young, smiley and sprightly Arts student. William spent a lot of between-times listening to his MP3 player and when we enquired what he was listening to, he said: himself, singing Italian Opera! We each took turns listening and each were blown away by his voice which was nothing like we had heard before! Some of the more sceptical of the group requested that he sing for us, but he was very shy and said he couldn't without accompaniment. With some encouragement, we moved away from the classroom and into the stair-well where William sang a few bars for us. It was definitely his voice in the recording, and there was no mistaking his strong talent.

When we returned to the classroom, some couldn't help but boast over the brilliance of our partner, but William was reluctant to share further. With a little bit of edging, though, a couple of the other Arts students demonstrated their skills. Below is a clip of Qiqi (or "Jennifer") who also kindly sang for us.



As a study partner, William was very enthusiastic and encouraging, and helped me get a grip on some of the finer points of pronunciation and character-writing. I just can't wait to see him perform again!