一首《生僻字》讓這兩位肯尼亞姑娘成了大明星

A Song“Uncommon Words\" Makes TwoKenyan Girls SUDerStarS

Author/ Confucius In stitute at Kenyatta U niversity of Kenya

還記得之前，超級火的《生僻字》這首歌么？“煢煢孑立沆瀣一氣踽踽獨行醍醐灌頂……”

Do you still remember the fairly popular song一一\"Uncommon Words\"？

“qiongqiongjieli， hang xieyi ql，jujuduxing， ti huguan ding_

當《生僻字》的歌詞讓好多人望而生畏甚至開始懷疑人生的時候，肯尼亞肯雅塔大學孔子學院的學生費思（Faith）和瑞秋（Richeal）卻向這些“生僻字”發起了挑戰。

“實力派”和“偶像派”

費思是孔院專科班的學生，2018年9月開始在肯雅塔大學孔子學院學習漢語，由于漢語發音好、學習能力強受到了孔院老師們的關注，對漢語和中國文化有著濃厚興趣的她憧憬有一天能夠到中資企業工作，當一名翻譯。 在一次課間活動中，孔院漢語教師志愿者卞家豪向學生們介紹了近期流行的《生僻字》，學生們一下子就被這首歌吸引了。卞家豪選取了《生僻字》中的“龘（da）”字教學生們書寫，費思用了最短的時間就將這個好多中國人都不認識的漢字按照正確的筆順迅速地寫了出來，伴隨著同學們的感嘆聲，費思決定演唱《生僻字》這首歌。

如果說費思是“實力派”，那么另一位演唱者瑞秋就是“偶像派”。專業為社會學的她自從2015年加入孔子學院以來，一直認真學習漢語，并積極參加孔院各種各樣的文化活動。

一次偶然的機會瑞秋聽了林俊杰的《江南》，這首歌旋律美妙，意境多變，讓人沉迷其中，從此她就深深地愛上了中文歌曲，而林俊杰也成了她最喜愛的歌手。能歌善舞的她不僅通過“全民K歌”自學了60余首中文歌曲，還在孔院舞蹈隊老師的指導下學會了許多中國舞蹈。

2017年瑞秋憑借一首《時間都去哪兒了》榮獲肯雅塔大學孔子學院首屆“肯尼亞好聲音”中文歌曲大賽冠軍，正式“出道”;2018年2月，她以一支《驚鴻舞》在春節活動中驚艷亮相，給現場觀眾留下了深刻印象;2018年5月，“漢語橋”肯尼亞賽區預選賽中，她憑借歌伴舞《半壺紗》，以優美的嗓音和動人的舞姿吸粉無數，榮獲比賽第毫不猶豫地答應了。

歌詞雖難，但她們決定迎接挑戰

視頻拍攝前正值學校期中考試，歌曲準備時間只有周末兩天。每天一次的培訓使她們了解了這首歌的內容以及每一個字的正確發音，而這期間，最困難的當屬歌詞中接連不斷的四字成語了，這部分的漢字不僅難認，讀起來還比較繞口，為了掌握這一段歌詞，她們在老師的指導下反復練習了無數遍。

拍攝當天費思和瑞秋的表現出乎了老師們的意料，她們竟然可以唱得一字不差！更讓人欣喜的是，她們的“后援團”——孔院武術隊，在視頻拍攝前就已經按要求穿好太極服，手里拿著孔院老師寫好的“生僻字”，有秩序地等待拍攝，拍攝過程極其順利，三個場景總共花了一個半小時。

孔子學院總部抖音號發布了《生僻字》的視頻之后，學生們紛紛點贊、轉發，兩位演唱者成了孔院的“大明星”。近期二人都申請了孔子學院一學年獎學金研修生，費思告訴孔院老師，以前她雖然漢語學得不錯，但由于性格比較內向，總是不敢表現自己，孔院文化活動也很少參加，《生僻字》的演唱讓她收獲了滿滿的自信，她近期的夢想就是能站在漢語橋的舞臺上演唱一首中文歌曲——毛阿敏的《天之大》。

而去年已經參加過“漢語橋”肯尼亞預選賽的瑞秋則表示，“十分感謝孔院提供的平臺，讓我有了這么多展現自己的機會，如果有幸能去中國，除了努力學習漢語之外，我一定要去看一場林俊杰的演唱會！”

When the lyrics of \"Uncommon Words\" made many people daunting and confused， Fethand Richeal， two Kenyan students of the Confucius Institute at Kenyatta University， chal-lenged these uncommon words instead.

\"Powerful Singer\" and \"Idol Singer\"

Feth is a student of the Confucius Instituteand has begun to learn Chinese language in theConfucius Institute at Kenyatta University sinceSeptember 2018. Due to her good pronunciationand strong learning ability， she draws attentionfrom the teachers of the Confucius Institute andpossesses a keen interest in Chinese language andChinese culture. Feth expects to be able to workfor a Chinese-funded enterprise and be an inter-preter one day.

During an inter-class activity， a voluntaryChinese teacher Bian Jiahao at the ConfuciusInstitute introduced the recently popular song\"Uncommon Words\" to the students， who wereimmediately attracted by it. Bian Jiahao chosethe word “龘（da）” in this song to teach thestudents to write. Feth quickly wrote the Chinesecharacter that even many Chinese do not knowin the correct strokes in the shortest time. Withthe exclamation of the students， Feth decided tosing this song.

If Feth is a powerful singer， Rachel must be anidol singer. She has been studying sociology sinceshe entered the Confucius Institute in 2015.During this period， she has always been learningChinese language and actively participating invarious cultural activities of the Confucius Insti-tute.

By chance， Richeal listened to Lin Junjie's\"River South\" and she fell in love with Chinesesongs because of their melodious thythm andwide-ranging conceptions. From then on， LinJunjie became her favorite singer. As a versa-tile girl who can sing and dance， she not onlylearned more than 60 Chinese songs throughthe app We Sing， but also had a command ofmany sorts of Chinese dances under the guid-ance of the teachers from the Confucius Insti-tute's dance team.

In 2017， Richeal made her debut and wonthe first prize with the song \"Where Time HasGone\" in the first \"Kenyan Good Voice\" Chi-nese Song Contest held by the Confucius Insri-tute at Kenyatta University In February 2018，she wowed the audience in the Spring Festivalactivities with the \"Jinghong Dance\"， which hasleft a deep impression on the audience; in May2018， she attracted many fans with her beauti-ful voice and moving dance in \"Half Pot Yarn\"，which won her the third prize in the prelimi-nary contest of the Chinese Bridge （Kenya）.When asked if she was willing to challenge thesong \"Uncommon Words\"， she agreed withoutany hesitation.

Difficult as the Lyrics， They still De-cided to Meet the Challenge

The video was taken before the school mid-term examination and the time for the songpreparation was only two days on weekends.The training once a day enabled them to under-stand the content of the song and the correctpronunciation of each word. During this pe-riod， the most diffcult thing was the continualfour-character idioms in the lyrics and it wasboth difficult to recognize them and twistedto say them out. In order to master the lyrics，they repeatedly practiced numerous times underguidance.

On the shooting day， Feth and Richeal's per-formance exceeded the teachers' expectations.They could sing every single word without mak-ing any mistake. What was even more gratify-ing was their \"back-up gro up\"—the ConfuciusInstitute's martial art team. Before the shooting，they had already dressed in Taichi clothes asrequired and held in hand the lyrics of the songwritten by Confucius Institute teachers to waitfor the video shooting. In addition， the shoot-ing process was extremely smooth and the threescenes merely took a total of one and a half hours.

After the video of \"Uncommon words\" wasreleased on Douyin， it received many likes andretweets， making the two singers \"superstars\" ofthe Confucius Institute. Recently， both of themapplied for the Confucius Institute's one academ-ic year-scholarship for advanced study Feth toldthe teachers that although she has a good Chinesestudy， she is always afraid to express herself andrarely participate in the cultural activities of theConfucius Institute because of her introvertedpersonaliry. The song \"Uncommon Words\" hasbestowed her with a great deal of confidence andher short-term expectation is to be able to singthe Chinese song \"Selfless Love\" by Mao Amin onthe stage of the Chinese Bridge.

Rachel， who participated in the preliminarycontest of the Chinese Bridge （Kenya） last year，said， \"I feel very grateful to the platform pro-vided by the Confucius Institute， on which I canhave so many opportunities to show myself. If Iam lucky enough to go to China， I must attenda concert of Lin Junjie besides learning Chineselanguage！ \"