Literary Tours, Comics Drawing and Songwriting Among Ways to Nurture Love for Chinese at Month-Long Reading Festival

Students who are taking part in the upcoming Tertiary Chinese Reading Festival 2021 will be able to participate in literary tours at the Civic District and Pulau Ubin, comics reading and drawing workshop, or Chinese songwriting sessions, among the range of variety of exciting activities.

2. This year, the Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning (CPCLL) has joined hands with a larger organising team comprising Lianhe Zaobao and various Institutes of Higher Learning in Singapore to expand the Festival's reach to more tertiary students. Now in its second year, the Festival will feature a range of online and offline activities to promote an appreciation and understanding for Chinese culture, language, and literature among tertiary students.

3. Festival highlights include a gameshow ("校园大声说!") helmed by television hosts Lin Youyi and Calvin Soh, where university and polytechnic students compete in activities like pop quizzes on Chinese literature and Singapore history, and enact short scenes from Chinese novels. A songwriting workshop ("我是词曲人") featuring Dr Liang Wern Fook and musical twins Li Wei Song and Li Si Song will allow participants to try their hands at composing lyrics and music to their own Chinese songs. Travel author Yap Seow Choong will organise literary tours ("文学漫步：转角遇见诗") in the Civic District and Pulau Ubin.

4. Minister of State for Education and CPCLL Chairperson Ms Sun Xueling also announced at the Festival's opening ceremony that CPCLL would collaborate with top film directors like Anthony Chen, Eric Khoo and Eva Tang to produce short films based on themes such as school life in Singapore and experiences in learning the Chinese language. Ms Sun said that these films would be released next year, and subsequently adapted into novels. A novel adaptation of Mediacorp's award-winning television series "A Quest to Heal (我的女侠罗明依)" will also be released next year.

5. The Festival will run from 6 November to 2 December 2021. Please refer to Annexes for details on Festival highlights, and background on the Festival's organising committee. For more information, please visit www.cpcll.sg.