Most recently, the Center for Language Education and Cooperation under the Education Ministry released a list of authorized universities and organizations for holding 2021 online Chinese Bridge programs. And our university is one on the list, being eligible to hold another online program after last year’s. It is this program’s aim to build an excellent online learning platform for learners, improve cultural exchanges and skills of teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages, and enhance global learners’ understanding of Chinese language and culture.
Last year, more than 100 overseas youths from Thailand, Italy, Russia and other countries attended the "Chinese Bridge" online program. By taking courses with rich themes, including Chinese language courses, hair embroidery, Chinese national flag stories, they discovered the charm of Chinese culture and Chinese classic arts. They said that they enjoyed and learned a lot in the program and looked forward to joining the program of this kind again.
This year, we gained the right to hold another online program, which is a great approval of our years’ endeavors in overseas student education. We had several discussions concerning this online program while applying for the right to hold it again. And we have organized a special meeting about building up a complete plan as soon as we won the bid to stage another one. The theme of the online program this year is “Gathering Online in Wenzhou, Appreciating Chinese Culture”.
This year, we still welcome lovers of Chinese language globally, especially those in Thailand, Italy, Germany, France and Finland. According to the needs and characteristics of overseas students, this program will display Chinese culture in the form of language class live-streaming and cultural activities live-streaming. In addition, we will also record cultural classes for learners, therefore they can watch the recorded classes whenever they want. Besides classes of special traditional Chinese culture which is similar to last year’s, this year, more classes of introducing contemporary Chinese culture will be added. We are striving to build a platform for overseas Chinese learners to interact with, participate in and experience Wenzhou's local culture in depth.
