Drawing Chinese Characters as a Third Space Practice: Visual and Cultural Reinterpretations by French Secondary School Students in the Draw the Chinese Character! Competition

ABSTRACT Informed by third space theory, this study examines how Chinese characters are visually reinterpreted and combined with cultural references in the drawings produced by French secondary school students through participation in Dessine le chinois! ( Draw the Chinese Character! ), an annual drawing competition held as part of the Chinese Characters Festival in France. A total of 452 student submissions from the 2022 competition were analyzed using an analytical framework focusing on (a) modes of Chinese character presentation, (b) cultural hybridity, and (c) individual variation and creative expression. The findings suggest that learners engage with Chinese characters not only as orthographic symbols but also as visual–semantic resources within multimodal compositions. The artworks reveal two primary representational strategies—standard form preservation and structural transformation—through which characters are integrated into broader visual scenes. Across the dataset, the artworks combine character forms with diverse cultural references and display recurring patterns in visual configuration. Building on these findings, the study suggests that extracurricular multimodal cultural activities may provide productive contexts for learners to explore Chinese characters as visual–semantic symbols and to engage in intercultural meaning‐making through creative visual expression.