C3S Report No. 0127/2016
The Chennai Centre for China Studies’ (C3S) China Quiz for College Students was conducted successfully at Stella Maris College on September 8, 2016. The team from IIT-Madras Department of Humanities & Social Sciences (Ashwin Philip, Nirmal A. P., Justin Joseph) won the quiz from among 26 teams from colleges in Chennai and Pondicherry University – a total of 77 students in all.
The winning team were awarded a cash prize of Rs. 15,000/-. They scored 100 points in the finals of quiz which had six rounds of questions for the four final teams.
The second prize went to the students of Department of Economics of Stella Maris College with 85 points (Jahnvi Balaji & Rumaiza Fatima). They received Rs.10,000/-.
The third place with 80 points was secured by the team from Stella Maris College’s International Studies Department (Bushra Begam, Albertina Nithya B., Sharon Angela) who were given a surprise bonus prize of Rs. 5,000/-.
The fourth team to reach the finals was the team from Madras Christian College (MCC) consisting of Rishi Prasanna, Gowtham Raj, and Chinmai Chandran.
All participants of the quiz programme received certificates of participation from C3S.
Sample Questions
The questions covered both China and Taiwan. Some of the questions asked in the prelims were as follows:
In which Chinese city was the G-20 summit this week?
(a) Beijing; (b) Hangzhou; (c) Shanghai; (d) Guangzhou
Which are the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China?
(a) Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Xi’an
(b) Xi’an, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou
(c) Beijing, Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong
(d) Beijing, Nanjing, Luoyang and Xi’an
What is the official name of China?
(a) People’s Republic of China; (b) Republic of China; (c) Democratic People’s Republic of China; (d) Zhonghua
What is the search engine Chinese citizens are allowed to use?
(a)Weibo; (b) Renren; (c) Google; (d) Baidu
Which Indian film grossed the highest returns at China’s box office?
(a) Awara ; (b) 3 Idiots ; (c) PK ; (d) Kung Fu Yoga
Questions from the Quiz Finals included the following:
What Overland and Ocean component constitutes OBOR?
The Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to which Chinese activist in 2010?
Which region in China is affected by Uygur militancy?
Where will the 2016 BRICS summit take place and which countries do the acronym stand for?
The finalists were asked to identify the Shanghai skyline, the president of Taiwan and the premier of China in some of the visuals questions.
Other Event Highlights and Statistics
The prize money and certificates for the winners and finalists as well as the certificates of participation for the teams who stayed on to watch the grand finale were presented by the C3S patron, Mr. B.S. Raghavan, at the prize distribution presided over by the director C3S, Commodore R.S. Vasan (IN, Retd.), and the Head of the Department of International Studies, Stella Maris College, Ms. Aarti Santhanam.
In addition to the participants the quiz prelims, the proceedings were witnessed by all the professors from the Department of International Studies, Stella Maris College, as well as some professors from other departments of the college which was the venue for C3S’ first ever China Quiz. C3S members Mr. K. Subramanian Mr. L.V. Krishnan were also present.
The quiz was conducted by Raakhee Suryaprakash. Vithiyapathy of C3S multitasked and handled the quiz rounds’ power points as well as maintaining time and keeping score. The C3S intern from Madras University Anurima handled the registration and preparation of certificates of participation for all students.
The Young Minds of C3S programme was successfully introduced to the audience by Asma Masood, which has since been followed up with interest from the students. The event was the success it was because of the invaluable support of the staff and students of the Department of International Studies headed by Ms. Aarti Santhanam.
At the C3S monthly meetings preceding the quiz it was decided that the Quiz would be promoted at Chennai city colleges with Political Science, International Relations, Defence & Strategic Studies, History, Journalism & Mass Communication, Economics, and Business Administration courses as well as the China Studies Centre and Department of Humanities and Social Science of IIT Madras.
The event details were also announced on social media. And city’s vibrant quizzing community was also notified. We had participants from many colleges and students from a wide variety of disciplines, proving that interest in China is not restricted to subject specialists.
At final count we had 26 teams participating although only 17 registered ahead of time. Stella Maris, Madras Christian College and Guru Nanak College sent the most number of teams. Followed by Vivekananda College and Pondicherry University’s department of South Asian Studies which both sent in two teams each. The department of Politics and Public Administration of Madras University sent in a team, as did SRM University – from their Information Technology and Genetics departments. Other disciplines of the participating students included Chemistry, Zoology, and Botany, as well as those aforementioned targeted intentionally.
Participants answered 30 multiple choice questions after registering in Stella Maris College’s Hall M-0-1 by 2:15pm. The highest score in the prelims was 23/30. All the questions for the quiz was selected from the question bank generated from the members of C3S from various disciplines of China Studies including history, strategy, international relations, culture and soft power of China, historical ties, science and technology, space and nuclear technology and achievements, news-making events and Nobel Prize wins as well as the OBOR initiative.
Answers to the prelim questions were discussed after the participants submitted their answer-sheets to the written preliminary round before breaking for tea. The four finalists were announced after the tea break. They included a team from Madras Christian College (Political Science), the team from IIT Madras (Humanities and Social Sciences), a team from the Economic department and one from the department of International Studies both from Stella Maris College. The finals was then won after the six rounds of questions including a visuals round, strategic thinking round and rapid fire round by the Humanities and Social Sciences students of IIT-Madras.
