CRI听力:52 Chinese compete at World Skills Abu Dhabi

Held every two years, the World Skills competition is hailed as the "Olympics for vocational skills."

The competition targets young people under 22 years old with skills ranging from floristry to bricklaying, aircraft maintenance to mobile robotics.

President of World Skills International, Simon Bartley said they expect young people to communicate with each other through the competition.

"The World Skills is a journey. It is a journey for the young people who are participating. And it is important that not only is this event an event of competition, where young people will compete for four days but it is also young people who would exchange their hopes and dreams with each other. So when they go home, they are better educated about different understanding of our world."

The World Skills represents the forefront of the world's vocational skills.

This year, over 1,200 people from 68 countries and regions are participating in 52 competitions.

Zhang Lixin, head of Chinese delegation, expects the 52 Chinese competitors to achieve better performances this year.

"Based on our research, we believe our performance will be better this year. In particular, in some traditional events, our competitors are generally more competent than previous years. We even expect some gold medals. Our target is to outperform our results from last time."

According to Zhang, the Chinese competitors stood out from several rounds of selections and went through tough training before the event.

Shanghai competitor Yang Shanwei will compete in the car-body fixing event.

As he said, he trained every day from morning until night.

"I got up at 6 a.m. every day. The first thing was to run 5 kilometers, followed by two sets of horizontal bar moves and two sets of parallel bar moves. The competition takes a total of 22 hours, spanning three and a half days. It will be an intense test of my physical stamina."

The competitors do not face the challenges alone. They also have the full-time support of experts who will guide them through the events.

Professor Song Fangzhi from Beihang University is China's top expert on CNC lathes and will be coaching competitor Chen Zhiming.

The professor believes Chinese competitors are competent in this skill.

"CNC lathes and CNC milling machines are widely used in China, with several millions of licensed operators. I believe our competitors are very competent. They have not won medals before, which is a pity, but this time we are well prepared."

The 44th World Skills competition starts on Sunday and will run until next Wednesday.

For CRI, I'm Huang Yue.