On January 12, Chinese Consul General Zhang Meifang attended the event "Joining the Winter Olympics, Together for a Shared Future" which organized by the Chinese Consulate General and the Confucius Institute at the Ulster University.

The pupils of Millburn Primary School took two-and-a-half weeks to learn the original lyrics in Mandarin to Meet me in Beijing, the song that will be played during this year's Olympics opening ceremony.

The teachers explained the background of the song and its meaning in English, and then worked with Chinese teachers on the pronunciation of the original lyrics in Mandarin.

A primary school in Northern Ireland sounds like an odd place to be hearing groups of children singing in Mandarin, but it's not the first time this has happened in the town of Coleraine.

Back in February 2020, when the pandemic ravaged China's Hubei province, the children of Coleraine's Millburn Primary School came together to sing Let the world be full of love in Mandarin in support of the millions of people of Wuhan under lockdown.

Millburn Primary School works in partnership with the Confucius Institute at Ulster University in Belfast, the only one of its kind in Northern Ireland.

Thanks to the institute's teachers, children start speaking Mandarin at the impressive age of four.

Professor Paul Seawright, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Ulster University, said he had been amazed by the interest in learning Mandarin in Northern Ireland's schools.