Spread Chinese Culture and Share the Bright Future of Chinese ---International Chinese Language Day Activities in Classroom at LNNU
In 2010 the United Nations celebrated for the first time Language Days and set as Chinese language Day Guyu (“Rain of Millet”), which is the sixth of 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese calendar, to pay tribute to Cangjie, who is believed to be the inventor of Chinese characters. The United Nations Chinese Language Day is designed to promote the use of Chinese language within the UN as well as to offer the world a window on Chinese language and Chinese culture. In 2020, Center for Language Education and Cooperation of the Ministry of Education (CLEC) launched a series of activities to celebrate International Chinese Language Day to promote the use of the Chinese language in the world and cultural exchange with the world, working to turn the International Chinese language Day into an event that goes beyond the UN as a common festival for all Chinese speakers across the world.
April 20, 2022, also Guyu on the lunar calendar, marked the thirteenth United Nations Chinese Language Day and the third International Chinese Language Day. Under the theme of “Chinese Language: Together for a Bright Future”, CLEC, jointly with ChinesePlus, called on Chinese language teaching institutions and partners across the world to welcome friends to celebrate this event globally. The College of International Education of Liaoning Normal University (CIE) actively responded to the call and organized a range of activities under the theme of “Spread Chinese Culture and Share the Bright Future of Chinese: International Chinese Language Day Activities in Classroom at LNNU” to enliven and enhance Chinese language teaching so as to promote further cultural communication between China and the world.
In Chinese language teaching classes, teachers at CIE integrated the theme of the International Chinese Language Day in the teaching. Each offered a special class based on traditional Chinese culture and classical Chinese poems. These special classes not only spread the knowledge of the International Chinese Language day among Chinese learners overseas but also provide them with a good chance to immerse themselves in the Chinese culture and classics.
In the Chinese writing class, the teacher, drawing on Chinese fairy tales like Cangjie inventing Chinese characters and Yugong moving the mountains, to help students to fit in the theme of “telling Chinese stories”, “knowing Chinese culture” and “learning Chinese writing”. The classes enabled the students to know more about the philosophic aspects of these stories, gain more knowledge about Chinese writing and practice writing based on the inspiration they drew from the class.
Pure Brightness is both a solar term and a special day to pay respects to the ancestors and to tidy their grave sites. In the comprehensive class, the teacher, centering the class on Pure Brightness, incorporated traditional Chinese thinking like ancestor worship with traditional festival customs and classical poems. The calligraphy and recitation of Du Mu’s “Pure Brightness” took the students on a tour to admire the beauty of Chinese language in terms of calligraphy, rhythm and artistic conception.
Mutual learning is crucial for in-depth communication between China and the world. In the spirit of “respecting one’s own culture and also appreciate the culture of others for the prosperity of human civilization”, the teacher encouraged the students to compare Pure Brightness with similar festivals in their own culture.
To introduce and experience Chinese culture, the teacher and the students learned and recited Jiangnan, a Yuefu poem. “Time to gather lotus in the Yangtze Valley, /A lotus leaves are fair and lusty./ Fish frolic amidst the lotus leaves...” Simple, plain, and catchy, the poem created a pleasant atmosphere for the students to know more about Chinese people who are not only hardworking but also knows how to enjoy life. After the class they read the poem aloud and shared videos of their reading in the class.
In these classroom activities centered on the International Chinese Language Day, CIE at LNNU took advantage of its own cultural resources in highlighting the cultural aspect of Chinese language in the classes to “spread Chinese Culture and Share the Bright Future of Chinese”. It will continue to attach maximum importance to quality of education and build its teaching feature so as to make its own contribution to the cause of teaching of Chinese across the world.