Principal Linda Miller said about 400 OGHS pupils and 85 Arthur Street School pupils watched the Confucius Institute performance in Dunedin.
Mrs Miller, who took part in a principals' delegation to China in April, said Chinese would be introduced to the OGHS curriculum in the second half of the year. Prof Hong Hu, the deputy director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Canterbury, said the tour consisted of 30 free performances in New Zealand schools that had, or planned to have, Chinese in their curriculum.
The performances were a mix of Shaolin Kung Fu and folk music and were funded by the Confucius Institute in Beijing, she said.
The tour gave prospective New Zealand pupils a ''taste of Chinese culture'' and the feedback from the first three tour stops had been positive, she said.
The 26 performers in the troupe were split evenly to perform at Otago Girls' High School and Columba College yesterday. The fast tempo of the bamboo flute solo by Wang Hongliang had the crowd applauding for an immediate encore.
Then the Songshan Shaolin Wushu Vocational Institute performers entertained the crowd by shattering plate iron with their heads and invited girls on to the stage to imitate the movement of animals, including a scorpion and a snake.
