HSK

No one in Alex’s family can speak Mandarin beyond the basics so he has had very little assistance from them. His grandparents only speak Cantonese. Despite this, through his hard work, he was able to independently operate the home internet test and challenge the HSK Level 4 Exam at the young age of 12, becoming the youngest candidate of this level since the Toronto Chinese Test Center started taking the tests 21 years ago. Chinese Version 中文报道

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Alex asked to learn Chinese in SK. At 5 years of age, Alex decided to learn Chinese because he wanted to be able to communicate better with his grandparents. In his first year, he took 1 hour sessions twice a week with a tutor. The following year, he transferred schools to The Dalton School, a bilingual Mandarin-English School in Toronto. He stayed at The Dalton School until grade 5 (technically he finished grade 6 as he had skipped a year academically, but Alex’s family did not officially skip him a grade, noted by Mr. Fox, Alex’s dad).

Alex and his classmates participating in The Dalton School Chinese New Year Play.

In the summer of 2019, Alex spent 10 weeks in China learning Mandarin at The Mandarin House in Shanghai and Omeida Language School in Yangshuo. Alex loved living and learning in China. He had the opportunity to travel across a lot of China and see many different sites. He found it fun to learn with so many different people from all over the world. Most importantly, he made a number of great Chinese friends in China who took him to watch Chinese movies, taught him in Mandarin how to skateboard, took him bike riding, etc. 

Alex and his classmates participating in the Dalton School Christmas Play.

His favourite memory was attending a Shanghai Shenhua FC football game with a passionate, local fan who bought tickets in the “Superfan” section. Alex spent the game learning all of the Shenhua songs in Chinese and spent the night cheering for the local team.

This past year, Alex pursued independent studies and continued his Mandarin learning with The Mandarin House online: studying 2 hours of Chinese a day for four days a week. He plans to continue his Chinese studies next year at the University of Toronto Schools (UTS) where he will be attending next year.

According to Mr. Fox, Alex's surname is Hu (胡), which comes from the English surname “Fox”. They know it is not a common surname, but one that does exist. His first name, Wen Li (文立), expresses the expectation of the elders: “knowledge makes one stand. " It was chosen by his great-grandfather, who was a school teacher in China many decades ago, and wanted to choose a name that was strong, smart and easy to write in case he never ended up learning Chinese well enough. 

Alex intends to become fully fluent in Chinese. In his interview, Alex says that he would one day like to study in China to take advantage of his bilingual (English and Chinese) backgrounds to further promote deeper relationships between Canada and China.  

Written by: Angie Xu, Cindy Wang, Cara Wang

Alex and his brother Nate Fox learning how to write Dongba calligraphy in Yunnan, China

Alex and his father, Mr. Bill Fox, summiting the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in Lijiang, China