Bob's Postcard from Home
Living in China, I have enjoyed a luxury not available to everyone in these dire times – the chance to go outside. Life in my province has been affected very minimally by the pandemic, compared to other regions. After two months of hiatus, local schools and work have started again, and so have the Chinese national-level high-school debate tournaments.
Public forum debate - the most common format in China - is not quite like parliamentary debate. There are only two teams, you debate for both the government and the opposition, and it is far more evidence-focused, rather than extemporaneous. Another major difference is that it only uses one motion, and this is maintained for the season. The main picture above shows my first 'flow' of the season: the notes you take in a debate to understand your opponent's evidence and arguments.
For the latest national debate, over 100 of the best Chinese debaters were taking part, including myself and my friend, Alex. The highlight of this tournament was the quarter-finals, in which we had the most difficult debate, making it also the most fun and rewarding. We were up against the champion of the first 2020 national tournament, Diego, whom we had met and lost to previously. He knew all our arguments and the counters, so going into this debate, I was trembling.
We lost against Diego on opposition previously, so we were quite surprised when he chose to debate on opposition. When his partner started reading the arguments, we were shocked, since half of them were exactly the same ones we had read against him. Fortunately, my opposition case had a self-destruct button that only I knew. Using this information to our advantage, we were able to win against them. The semi-finals and finals were comparatively stress-free. The debates from this point on generally relied on normal arguments so it simply came down to debate execution. We were delighted to win the finals in a landslide decision of 5 - 0.
Normally I would have returned to Winchester by now and miss the debates in China. However, I'm still here and the season is ongoing, with four more tournaments to participate in so I am looking forward to meeting more adversaries on the stage.
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