JOHANNESBURG -- The Confucius Institute in South Africa's Stellenbosch
University is organizing a "China Month," which is scheduled to be held from
October 4 to 27, to celebrate Chinese culture.
Lucy Corkin, projects director of Center for Chinese Studies ( CCS) under the
university, said in an interview with Xinhua that during the activity, there
will be lectures on China's cultural history and China-Africa relations, a food
festival as well as a photographic exhibition featuring pictures taken by South
African students on their trips to China.
Confucius Institute status was confered on the CCS by Chinese Education
Minister Zhou Ji during his visit to South Africa in June, 2004 when intention
between the South African and the Chinese governments to establish such a center
was expressed. The center officially opened its doors in June, 2005.
"We are currently negotiating an agreement with Peking University as our
Chinese university partner to consolidate the Confucius Institute at CCS,
Stellenbosch University," the director said.
Peking University has seconded a teacher with extensive experience in
teaching Chinese as a foreign language to assist with Mandarin teaching here, he
said.
"Zhang Yuan, who is currently teaching at the Stellenbosch University's
Department for Modern Foreign Languages, recently organized and presented a
teachers' workshop, training advanced Mandarin students to be tutors in the
Mandarin language."
In the university there are over 80 Mandarin learning students, who are very
motivated to learn Chinese language, either because of their interest in China's
rich culture, or because of China's rising influence in the global economy.
The Chinese government has been committed to supporting and encouraging
Chinese language learning in South Africa. It has given financial support for
the establishment of CCS and language lab, dispatching Chinese teachers to the
center, which will initially concentrate on study of the Chinese language and
incrementally introduce other fields of study, including Chinese culture,
politics and history, as well as carrying out research into a number of spheres
of Chinese life and its relationships with Africa and in particular South
Africa.
Currently two universities and twenty schools in South Africa offer Mandarin
course.
