Karaoke Contestants Croon—in Chinese

“I love you like a mouse loves rice,” crooned Adam R. Miller ’07—in impeccable Mandarin—at the fourth annual Intercollegiate Karaoke Contest hosted by the Harvard Hong Kong Society (HHKS) Saturday night.

Judges deemed the New Jerseyan Miller the “audience favorite” for his performance of “Mouse Loves Rice,” or “Lao Shu Ai Da Mi,” as he held his own against other contestants who were native speakers.

“Now that I’ve been speaking for a year and a half, I feel confident in my Mandarin,” said Miller.

The HHKS contest, in Boylston Hall, resumed after a year-long hiatus.

The contest featured representatives from campus groups as well as Brown University, Babson College, Bentley College, and Boston College, singing songs in Mandarin and Cantonese.

“The Hong Kong associations at all the different colleges are kind of small, so it’s easier for us to contact them,” said the society’s co-president, K. Edward Chan ’06, who said that this year had the largest participation in the event’s history. “Karaoke is a big phenomenon in Hong Kong and China.”

The winner, Vincent See, a senior at Brown, sang his way to success with “Ai Shi Yong Heng” (“Love is Eternal”) and “Dan Che” (“Bicycle”) while on a crutch due to a skiing accident. Although he said he was pleased with his victory, See said, “the main purpose we came was to meet people and have fun.”

The event featured guest performances by Harvard’s Asian a cappella group C-Sharp and University of Pennsylvania’s Chinese a cappella group PennYo, a play on the word “peng you,” Chinese for “friend.” Erkin Y. Uyghur ’08 performed traditional music of his native Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China. He said he is the “first and only” ethnic Uyghur at Harvard. “Since I got here last fall, I’m trying to let more people know about my culture,” he said.

—Staff writer Joyce Y. Zhang can be reached at jyzhang@fas.harvard.edu.