Chinese Culture that goes beyond Borders from buzai232's blog

Chinese Culture that goes beyond Borders

Samuel Esteban’s romance with Chinese began when he was a high school student. The Costa Rican soon had many Chinese friends who gave him insights into China’s culture, which stirred his interest even more.To get more chinese culture news, you can visit shine news official website.

“It’s just amazing that China has so many years of history,” Esteban says. “It’s really interesting learning about China’s dynasties and how they worked and how the country was formed.”

The 20-year-old decided to learn the language after what he called a “cool moment”. That was three years ago when he had just been confronted with his first word in Chinese, courtesy of a Chinese friend, who was amazed when Esteban immediately lobbed the word back at him, tone perfect.

“How’s that possible?” Esteban quotes the friend as saying. “This is your first day trying to pronounce any Chinese word, and you got the tone right.”

Esteban then embarked on his Chinese learning journey, in 2018, and the following year, to further his study, went to the Confucius Institute of the University of Costa Rica in San Jose, which, like its peers around the world, teaches Chinese language and culture.

Sharing Esteban’s passion, more and more people in Costa Rica, with a population of 5 million, are learning Chinese.

In 2010 the country’s Confucius Institute, the first of its kind in Latin America, welcomed 207 Chinese learners and has since enjoyed steady growth in enrolments. The number rose to 884 in 2019, and last year the institute had 1,206 students, a rise particularly notable because of the fact that it was at a time when the pandemic had forced classes to go online.

“Learning Chinese opens new opportunities for Costa Ricans and leads them to better understand Chinese culture,” says Kuok Wa Chao, director of the Confucius Institute in San Jose.Globally, more than 20 million people in more than 180 countries and regions are learning Chinese, according to a report released in June by China’s Ministry of Education. More than 70 countries have incorporated Chinese-language courses into their national education systems. Chinese has become an official language of the United Nations World Tourism Organization since Jan 25.

Chinese-language tests have also proliferated in recent years. Forty million Chinese-language tests including HSK(Chinese Proficiency Test) and YCT (Youth Chinese Test) were sat in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, the Ministry of Education says.

Liang Haoguang, executive director of the China Academy of the Belt and Road Initiative, says that with China’s continuing economic growth and increasing international influence, more and more foreigners see Chinese in the context of its place in the vast market that is China.“An increasing number of Chinese companies are investing in countries that are part of the BRI, and they crave those who can speak and write Chinese. This alone provides many career opportunities.

“Moreover, with closer trade ties between China and those countries, local companies also need (foreign) employees who know Chinese.”The BRI has facilitated cultural exchanges between China and other countries, which motivates more and more foreigners to learn the language not only for financial reasons but also out of curiosity about a different culture. This makes Chinese an alluring option when they choose to learn a second language.”

In 2015, during a state visit to the United Kingdom, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that language “is the key to learning about a country and its culture”.

Embracing different cultures no doubt results in more people-to-people exchanges and mutual learning among civilisations, which, as Xi said in 2019, “is a sure way to eliminate estrangement and misunderstanding and promote mutual understanding among nations”.

Xi made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilisations at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. He also stressed that people are the “best bridge” for exchanges.