Chen Anyi delivering a speech at the 2025 International Public Speaking Competition (IPSC) Qualifier in Beijing in February 2025.

I stood on the podium, my heart pounding. The cheers of the audience surrounded me, yet all I could hear was the echo of my own words from just an hour ago. In my impromptu speech, I told the audience that this might be the last time I stood on the stage of this competition.

But fate had other plans. At that very moment, I learned that I won the national champion at the International Public Speaking Competition (IPSC) Qualifier and would be one of the only two speakers representing China at the 2025 IPSC held by the English Speaking Union in London this coming May. It was an honor beyond words, a dream that had once seemed impossibly distant. And yet, here I was.

My topic in that impromptu speech was "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." As I looked out at the audience, I realized how deeply those words resonated with my own journey.

From shaky start to strong connections

Three years ago, I never would have imagined this.

In high school, my English teacher encouraged me to participate in the FLTRP Cup, a national foreign language contest organized by the Beijing Foreign Studies University, in collaboration with the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP), but fear kept me from taking that first step. I was paralyzed by the fear of failure and judgment, as well as the thought that my voice might be drowned out in the crowd.

My first real competition — the "FLTRP·ETIC Cup" "Understanding Contemporary China" National Foreign Language Contest for College Students of Anhui Province — came in November 2023, when I was three months into the freshman year of college.