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Bright-red Chinese paper-cuts, expressive facial make-up, exquisite blue and white porcelain fans and unique handmade clay works－with the display of students’ learning achievements, the "Chinese Bridge" On-line Winter Course came to an end on January 18. More than 100 teachers and students from Latvia, Vietnam, France, Japan and other countries participated in this on-line course.
The closing ceremony is held at the School of International Culture, SCNU.
Shang Quanyu, the Chinese dean of the Confucius Institute in Latvia made a speech at the closing ceremony. Mr. Shang congratulated the organization with the successful closure of the winter course and expressed his heartfelt thanks to SCNU for carefully organizing and hosting this course program. He emphasized that this course provided a valuable opportunity for overseas fans of Chinese to learn about the Chinese language and culture, and built a platform for mutual exchange.
Mr. Shang Quanyu makes a speech at the closing ceremony.
Liu Ling, executive vice dean of the School of International Culture, recognized the great progress made by all the participants. From the works presented, she saw that the Chinese proficiency of the students had greatly improved in a short time. She further encouraged the students to share what they have learned, seen, heard, and thought over the past seven days with their relatives and friends so that more people could learn more about Guangzhou and Lingnan culture.
Ms. Liu Ling makes a speech at the closing ceremony.
During the eight-day course, the students fully demonstrated their love for Chinese by actively interacting with the teachers, and earnestly completing the homework. The most popular with students, of course, is still the talent class. In this class, the students learn the about the Chinese zodiac by making paper-cuts of the animals in the Chinese zodiac.
From the blue and white porcelain fan production process they learnt to appreciate the charm of Chinese fans. To understand the characters in Peking Opera, the students learnt about the meaning of the make-up used to paint the faces of Peking Opera performares. They learnt about the beauty of Chinese costumes by making a clay cheongsam. Many of the students expressed their hope to study in China one day and have a better understanding of China.
Emilija Marcenko, one of the students, said: though this camp is held on line, the intensity of it is great and my Chinese level has improved a lot. I hope I will have the chance to join such a Chinese course again.
Huang Yingyue, the teacher in charge of beginners' class 1, joyfully told us that, among her students, there were 2 elderly women aged 65 and 73 years old respectively. It must be tough, especially for them, to learn a new language, but surprisingly they both took pains to do their best. "As long as you want, you can learn anything no matter how old you are," said Huang.
SCNU has been holding the "Chinese Bridge" Winter Camp since 2005, but this was the first time that the "Chinese Bridge" class was organized on line. Different from previous traditional face-to-face learning, the on-line classes were pre-recorded, although they still featured the traditional methods of learning. To enhance the interactions in the on-line classes, some overseas students at SCNU took part in recording the videos, acting as participants to talk about their experience of the Lingnan culture.
Tian Liang, a student from Mexico at SCNU, joined in the recording of the course materials. He said that helping to make the course programs, he had been introduced to the real Chinese food, which was so different and so much better than he had imagined. His favorite match is youtiao (fried doughstick) with soy milk.
Li Wei, a student from Armenia learning at SCNU, participated in the Tai Chi martial arts and traditional crafts courses. He felt more relaxed after doing Tai Chi and learned how to make different decorations with flowers. He said that participating in these kinds of activities helped him understand Chinese culture and people better and he would share what he had learned in the class with his friends. "Studying Chinese honestly reset my mind about China and Chinese people," he added.
International students are learning to play Tai Chi.
Ma Shuying, a student majoring in communication worked as a host for the recording of the program. "It was a privilege to do this meaningful job. This has been the most wonderful and fortunate experience during my college life," she said.
Also at the closing ceremony, the students and project team members were awarded with the completion certificates and a certificate of honor. "These few months of preparations were challenging and exhausting, but it was comforting to see everything turned out to be worthwhile. We attained great achievements, just as we believed from the very beginning," Dai Xiangbin, the project leader of this on-line winter course concluded with great emotion.
Students and project team members were awarded with certificates
Funded by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation of the Ministry of Education of China, this “Chinese Bridge” Delegation On line has been one of the successful attempts of SCNU, providing the most suitable Chinese language and culture courses based on students’ cultural background, age characteristics and learning methods of different students from different countries.
Source from School of International Culture
Translated by Chen Menghan, Lin Zihao, Yan Xiaoxi, Ma Shuying
Proofread by Edwin Baak
Edited by Li Jianru
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