On Tuesday the staff and students of Davis College Mallow were visited by a high profile Chinese dele-gation which comprised government officials. Davis College was the only school chosen by the delegation to visit because of their strong link with the Confucius Institute. Last April a teacher from the school, Ms O’Callaghan, along with five then-Transition Year students visited Shanghai University and spent over two weeks there learning the language and culture. Ms O’Calla-ghan was the only Irish teacher in the country invited to go on the the trip.
On arrival on Tuesday the delegation were treated to the harmonies of the school traditional group which played a haunting rendition of an old Irish classic. Subsequently, Caitlin Aherne, a world champion Irish dancer and second year student at Davis College, performed a soft-shoe Irish reel, much to the delight of the delegation who had their cameras on hand. The students who had travelled to Shanghai then impressively addressed the delegation in Chinese, and before the conclusion of the showcase the delegation were treated to a hard shoe hornpipe by Caitlin Aherne which was received with rapturous applause. The delegation then extended a formal invitation to the staff and students of Davis College to visit them in China, in a drive to forge stronger links between the two cultures.