It’s a very special Christmas Eve for students at the senior high campus of Shenzhen Foreign Languages School (SFLS) in Yantian District, as they were holding a gala to mark the closing of their annual foreign languages festival that lasted 45 days.

The young thespians performed 10 dramas and musicals, including “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamilton,” “Aladdin,” “Wicked” and “The Sound of Music” in English, “Murder on the Orient Express” in Spanish, “Notre-Dame de Paris” in French as well as “Sleeping Beauty” in Japanese. Adapted from a classical repertoire, the shows retained the original storylines but were spiced up with a contemporary sense of humor.

Huang Huihui, a 10th-grader, impressed the audience with her voice performance of an excerpt from the animation “Kung Fu Panda.” “I couldn’t tell if that’s the original voice cast or Huang’s performance,” said a student in the audience. “She’s incredible!”

Also performing during the evening were the school’s choir, instrumental club, a cappella club, comics and animation club and street dancing club. The three-hour gala concluded with a bang when members of the street dancing club rocked the audience with a dance titled “Move Your Body.”

Offering courses in six foreign languages that include English, Japanese, French, German, Russian and Spanish, the school is one of few secondary schools in China that teach several foreign languages.(Debra Li)