孔子学院在南非迅速增加 Confucius Institute Grows Fast in South Africa

Hello and welcome to this edition of  Africa Express on China Radio International. I'm your host, Wei Tong.

Confucius, or Kong Zi, is an ancient Chinese philosopher and educator who lived around 2,500 years ago. He trained some 3,000 students over the course of his life and traveled to many feudal states. Nowadays, he's revered as one of the dominant thinkers in history and his teachings are spreading across the world. An institute dedicated to promoting the Chinese language and culture has been named in his honor. It's propagating his legacy across the globe, with more than 150 branches to date.

Today our correspondent in Harare, Cheng Qinghua, will take us to visit the Confucius Institute at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa.

Report: Capetown impressed me greatly. It's a 400-year-old city with a beautiful environment and multicultural, multi-ethnic population.

But I was doubly impressed when I arrived at the Afrikaans-speaking Stellenbosch campus, where a blonde girl greeted me in Mandarin Chinese!

Her name is Hanahn Ediger, she was born in Germany and she's one of the 97 students studying Mandarin Chinese at the Confucius Institute at Stellenbosch University. She took me to a Chinese class, where the students were practicing sentences with their Beijing-born teacher.

"Are you all here? Wang Ying has not yet come. All other students have come now. What's the matter with Wang Ying?"

I noticed some students were quite fluent in Chinese. A few could even crack jokes with the new words they had learnt that day, making the other students burst into laughter.

Johnathan is one of the students, a tall young man keen on improving his Chinese. He said he sincerely wants to visit China.

"I hope with the Chinese-Bridge competition, I will go this year, if I can do well enough."

He told me he's been preparing for the 2007 Chinese-Bridge Chinese Speaking Competition in Beijing. He said he can guess the meaning of some Chinese characters before he learns them. That also impressed me! Good luck, Jonathan!

Jonathan told me he loves Chinese cuisine. He used to work as a chef before he started the Chinese course.

"Chinese food? I like spicy food!"

I told him Sichuan Province would be a great place for him to go on his next gourmet tour of China.

After class, I talked with the teacher, Amy Yu, from Beijing.

"Most of the students have shown a keen interest in Chinese culture. They find it fascinating because it's so rich and has such a long history. Some want to travel in China. Others see China as full of opportunities, with one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Others still want to join their friends and relatives in promoting trade with China."

Dr. Martyn Davies is the Dean of the Confucius Institute at Stellenbosch University. He said the Institute was established in June 2004. In October 2006, the University held a month-long Festival of Chinese Culture. There was a photography exhibition, lots of Chinese books and a multimedia display to help students and faculty members learn more about China, from the natural scenery to the colorful multi-ethnic culture. A number of special activities were also held, like tea drinking, Chinese cooking, and performances of folk songs and dances.

During the Festival, a lot of students learned their Chinese zodiac sign, which is based on the year of birth.

Dr. Martyn Davies, a senior researcher of Chinese studies, said it's very important to learn a foreign language in today's multicultural world.

"If you don't speak the same language and have little cultural commonality, it's very hard to build trust without a long history of contact. Building people-to-people contact is the most sustainable and most long-term way of building mutual trust."

Dr. Davies spends most of his time promoting China, its language and culture. Last year, he delivered 85 public speeches on China and taught courses at the business school of University of Pretoria. The world's leading media agencies quoted him 108 times, including the BBC, cnn, Al Jazeera, China's CCTV and Xinhua News Agency. Local publications also ran stories quoting him.

By the end of my visit, I was convinced the Confucius Institutes play a vital role in helping to bridge the cultural gap between Chinese people and the people in other parts of the world.

That was our Harare correspondent Cheng Qinghua reporting on the Confucius Institute in the University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town, from South Africa. I am Wei Tong. Thanks for listening and bye for now!