Chinese Culture | Learn Chinese Online

09/30/2017

Themed China-India stone statue art exhibition opens today

Ancient China-India stone statues exhibition opens today

“Brahma eastern soil, Twin lotus flowers – 400-700 AD India-China sculpture art exhibition” opened in Sichuan Museum on September 29^th. India’s 56 pieces (sets) and 103 pieces (sets) of statues are formally unveiled to the public. The exhibition, jointly organized by Sichuan Museum, Palace Museum and Indian National Museum and assisted by Fujian Museum and Zhejiang Province Museum, relive the significant development period of over 1500 years ago in China and India.

Ancient China-India stone statues exhibition opens today

The last stop of the whole exhibition, of which the curation took more than 3 years, was in Sichuan Museum, following Palace Museum, Fujian Museum and Zhejiang Province Museum, and will last for about 3 months. The rich collections from more than 20 cultural heritage units will be exhibited in the same place, including the symbolic stone statues and few bronze and clay ones from Indian Gupta and post Gupta period, and from Chinese Northern Wei Dynasty to early period of Tang Dynasty, which gives a rare grand feast of art in recent years.

Ancient China-India stone statues exhibition opens today

From 400-700 AD, Gupta Dynasty was gradually getting powerful. It was the rare unified dynasty in Indian history and known as the “Golden period”. At the same time, China was in its transmission era from the Northern and Southern Dynasties to early Tang Dynasty, which formed the cultural diversity and became the herald of art in the flourishing Tang Dynasty. The ancient Chinese and Indian masterpieces, mainly stone statues, were displayed in Sichuan province, where the most Chinese stone grottos are located, which witnesses a long history of cultural exchanges between the two countries.

Ancient China-India stone statues exhibition opens today

The exhibition is open from September 29^th 2017 to January 7^th 2018. In order to better show the Chinese Indian statues select to the public, Sichuan Museum has delayed the closing time till 9 PM. Tourists can get the tickets with their ID cards or other valid documents and it is free to visit.

09/29/2017

Greek Minister of Culture and Sports: I want to start learning Chinese

In April launched “Greece-China 2017 Year of Cultural Exchanges and Cooperation in Creative Industries”. At present, Greek Minister of Culture and Sports Lydia Koniordou is paying a week-long visit in China.

Greek Minister of Culture and Sports: I want to start learning Chinese

Her first debut in front of the whole world was in the opening ceremony of 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. She is a Greek national actress, who has portrayed on the stage Medea and a series of wonderful figures in the history of Greek dramas. She has a profound theoretical knowledge, teaches and directs ancient Greek dramas in University of Oxford, New York University and Shanghai Theater Academy.

Greek Minister of Culture and Sports: I want to start learning Chinese

When it comes to drama, she shared her professional opinion, “Ancient Greek drama and Chinese Beijing Opera are both an art integrated with music, poetry and dance. There are plenty of similarities and differences in theater performance for the two countries, which shows us the meaning and the reason of our dialogue and exchange. I have started teaching ancient Greek drama in Shanghai Theater Academy, and I was looking for dialogues and communication on theater stage between the two ancient civilizations.”

Greek Minister of Culture and Sports: I want to start learning Chinese

Lydia Koniordou regards as important the China visit, “China and Greece are two parallelly existing great ancient civilizations. The mutual exchange between two civilizations will surely benefit each other. Chinese is a charming language, which can take us back to human memory of countless generations ago and enrich the sensation experience. I try to start learning Chinese and I would like to use such language to learn about Chinese culture and to communicate with Chinese people.”

Greek Minister of Culture and Sports: I want to start learning Chinese

Her first Chinese language mentor is Tong Luo, famous translator Niansheng Luo’s granddaughter. Niangsheng Luo, translator of the Complete Work of Ancient Greek Drama; Jinling Luo, famous director of a series of ancient and modern Greek dramas such as Medea and Supper; Tong Luo, owner of Qian He Culture Center and director of recently staged Greek drama Oedipus Rex; three generations in Luo family constitute the cultural inheritance sequence between China and Greece. Lydia’s Chinese language learning journey is just “unique”.

Greek Minister of Culture and Sports: I want to start learning Chinese

Lydia’s China visit begins from Shanghai, followed by Dunhuang, a city blended with eastern and western civilization, then to China’s capital Beijing. The journey is to trace the cultural history of “One Belt One Road” and to explore one foreign language through the dramas and murals. It is believed that the journey will bring her brand new life experience and with a Chinese-speaking Greek minister of culture, the cultural exchange between two ancient civilizations will step forward onto another even more broad stage.

08/01/2016

American Indian girl won the third place of national Chinese story telling competition in Singapore

Amercian Indian girl Meera came to settle down in Singapore with parents when she was 1-year old. The first language she picked up is Chinese. Her mother arranged her to learn Chinese from a neighbor working as a Chinese language teacher. They make Chinese conversation for two hours every day to practice the speaking and pronunciation.

Nine years later, Meera won the third place of the national Chinese story telling competition in Singapore, with clear articulation and mellow tune. In the past one year, she has won twice the third place in two Chinese speech contests. American Indian girl won the third place of national Chinese story telling competition in Singapore

Meera’s mother Subra understood the importance of Chinese language and started to cultivate the her daughter’s interest in Chinese language. She said, “We hope that she gets the spiritual connection with Chinese culture, especially when people from all over the world gather together, we cannot ignore the multi-culture because of our Indian origin.”

Meera is a fourth-grade student in Anthony girls’ school, studying Chinese as her second language. Since the second grade, she has been always assigned to the best Chinese language class and leading the way. When she joined Chinese drama class, Meera was praised by the teacher of her acting talent.

Meera said, “I like telling stories and won’t feel nervous at the stage. I want to participate in more such competitions in the future.”

Because Meera’s parents can’t speak Chinese, she went to the cram school for Chinese language classes from 4 to 8-year old. When she goes to bazaar with parents, she will grasp the opportunity to practice the dialogue with the vendors. Subra said, “Once we ran into one taxi driver, he insisted on not charging us because he thought Meera’s Chinese is so great.”

At home, as a Hindi language teacher, Subra communicates with Meera in Hindi and Meera’s father in another Indian dialect Konkani to make sure that Meera masters the mother language. Meera can also speak basic Philippine Tagalog and Spanish. Her parents plan to let her study one Chinese dialect such as Hokkien or Teochew.

It is reported that Chinese story telling final match of Singapore national primary schools was held recently in Tao Nan School, with a total participant of 56 schools and 106 students. The competition has marked its 12th anniversary.

07/29/201607/30/2016

Wales Chinese language teaching project forum held in Confucius Institute at Cardiff University

Recently, 9th Wales Chinese teaching project forum was held in Confucius Institute at UK’s Cardiff University. 32 language teaching heads from Confucius Institutes at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Bangor University and the primary and secondary schools in Wales, were present at the forum.

The forum, taking “Gather strength, Improve together” as topic, aimed to sum up Chinese teaching experience and achievement in the past half a year and to overcome the difficulties encountered in local Chinese teaching, which facilitate the integration of the Chinese language to Welsh language teaching system and determine the future development plan of Chinese teaching projects in the primary and secondary schools of Wales.

The forum opening ceremony was presided by Rachel Williams, primary and secondary teaching project manager of Confucius Institute at Cardiff University, and Chinese dean Yubei Zhou delivered a welcome speech. Rachel made a comprehensive summary of the development of Chinese language teaching in Wales over the past eight years. She emphasized the important support from Chinese national Hanban and Welsh government for Chinese language teaching. She also pointed out that the focus of Chinese teaching in primary and secondary schools in the coming years will be cultivating local Chinese language teachers.

Later on, some Confucius classroom directors discussed one after another about the impact of globalization on school education. They said that language teaching plays a vital role in helping better adapt the local citizen to the new circumstances. The development of Chinese language teaching has set up a communication bridge between Wales and China, which benefits the regional development in the long term.

After one day of a heated discussion, the delegates proposed many methods of localizing Chinese language teaching, for instance, drawing the reasonable teaching outline, providing teachers with a probation period, attracting parents on Chinese teaching and so forth. They also made an agreement on intercollegiate and regional (e.g. with England) exchange and cooperation. The delegates generally believe that improving communication channels and strengthening the publicity can effectively promote Chinese language and culture in Wales.

It is understood that Confucius Institute at Cardiff University places a great importance on Chinese teaching in the local primary and secondary schools since its establishment. So far, more and more schools in Wales have absorbed Chinese teaching into Welsh Baccalaureate. Welsh government has also given a strong support for Chinese teaching.

07/17/201607/26/2016

2016 Chinese language competition successfully held in Calcutta

On July 16, Chinese Consulate of Calcutta, cooperated with Chinese language school in Calcutta, successfully held Chinese language competition of Sino-Indian Friendship Cup this year. Zhanwu Ma, consul-general of China in Calcutta, Subrata Mukherjee, Indian West Bengal village autonomy and development minister and Madan Saraff, founder and chairman of Chinese language school in Calcutta attended the activity.