A total of 4,000 students from across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area competed in an online recitation contest themed “Embrace Spring,” which wrapped up Friday, the Shenzhen Economy Daily reported.

Contestants aged from kindergarteners to adolescents paid homage to the heroes in the virus fight — such as medics, community workers and others — and expressed their hope for spring and the restart of life after the epidemic by reciting original pieces in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.

All the entries were submitted and rated online, and 1,500 were awarded after rounds of competition. Awards included 82 gold prizes, 148 silver prizes, 233 bronze prizes, and 775 merit prizes. A special “Discovering Spring” prize was given to 299 contestants.

Eighty schools, including Liyuan Foreign Languages Primary School, Futian Foreign Languages School, Futian Nanhua Experimental School and Beihuan Middle School, each received the Excellent Organizing Prize at the contest.

The contest gave students opportunities to exchange with their peers, encouraged them to display their talents, and enabled them to have more empathy for frontline staff in the fight against the virus. Moreover, holding the contest online in lieu of a physical venue guaranteed the children’s safety, as the epidemic was not totally eliminated in the city, according to the parents.

Students stated that the contest gave them the chance to pass on their tributes to the heroes and express their hopes for spring to more people.

Excellent contestants will have the opportunity to meet up with recitation enthusiasts from other provinces this October at a fairytale exchange event in Beijing.

This May the organizers will launch a recitation contest of classical Chinese poems translated into English. A total of 365 classic poems have been selected for that purpose. The event will also select 365 participants to serve as “young ambassadors of Chinese poems,” whose recitations will be edited into a video playlist to be uploaded to live-streaming sites.

The contest is co-hosted by the organizing committees of the China Fairytale Festival and Shenzhen Reading Month, as well as the Shenzhen Municipal Language Work Committee, and was organized by the Shenzhen Fairytale Art Troupe. The contest was launched online on March 1.

(Wang Haolan)