By staff reporter ZHANG HONG

Chinese calligraphy --- an art that requires great skill.

China’s best-known ancient sage, Confucius, has had a profound impact on the nation’s culture for more than 2,000 years. Now he has become the brand image for an international Chinese language academy. Confucius Institute, the first Chinese government sponsored language school officially opened in Seoul, capital of South Korea, on November 21 2004. Akin to Germany’s Goethe Institute and Spain’s Institute de Cervantes in Beijing, Confucius Institute represents quality Chinese language training on an international stage.

Today, some 30 million people around the world are learning Chinese as a foreign language. In the coming years, as the country’s economic and cultural links expand, that number is expected to multiply. In 1987, China’s Ministry of Education established the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL). The NOCFL is a primary sponsor of Confucius Institute, which is part of the official effort to promote Chinese language studies in foreign countries. Based in Beijing, the school intends to proliferate across the globe, under Sino-foreign cooperative agreements.

Supply and Demand

It was no coincidence that the first Confucius Institute started up in Seoul. China, since it started its reform and opening up drive more than two decades ago, has had hordes of South Korean businesspeople enter the country. There are now several South Korean mini-villages dotted around the Chinese capital, complete with Korean stores, restaurants and kindergartens. Korea itself is experiencing skyrocketing demand for Chinese language courses. The Seoul Confucius school is run on a bilaterally cooperative basis, the South Korean side providing facilities and equipment, while the Chinese side supplying qualified teachers and textbooks.

An Yuxiang, Counselor of Education with the Chinese Embassy in South Korea, says Chinese has become the third most popular foreign language among Korean students, following English and Japanese. More than 100 local universities run Chinese courses for some 160,000 students. The Chinese version of TOEFL, the HSK exam, is now in its 11th year in South Korea. Last year, a record number of 23,000 South Korean students pored over HSK exam material - on their own turf.

Spurred on by the China boom, interest in Chinese language learning has surged in recent years. In South Korea, annual increases in the number of students taking Chinese have hit an astonishing 38 percent, while corresponding figures for those taking French, English, Japanese or Spanish have hovered around 2--4 percent.

In Japan, Chinese has leapfrogged most European languages, coming in second only to English as the most popular foreign language. The situation is similar in both Australia and the United States, with Chinese ranking the first or second most popular foreign language in these traditional economic heavyweights. So with all these nations suddenly seeking qualified Chinese teachers, who is filling the gap?

Volunteers to the Rescue

Today, just 3,000 people hold the Certificate for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education. However another 6,000 are doing the job on a full time or part time basis. With 60,000 foreign students in China, it’s hard enough trying to find qualified teachers to work at home, never mind in Malaysia or the United States. The Chinese government cites financial constraints as another major reason why it’s difficult to send the teachers abroad. In an effort to improve the situation, in 2004, the government staged the “China international Chinese teacher volunteer plan.” The NOCFL set up a volunteer center to handle the recruitment, training and financing of suitable volunteers who wish to teach Chinese abroad. Around 30,000 people have so far expressed an interest in the volunteer program.

The Chinese language has, for political and cultural reasons, lagged behind English, Japanese and other European languages among students all over the world. The Confucius Institute, and the China volunteer plan hope to change this situation, aiming to train 100 million Chinese learners across the globe within five years.

Learning Useful Chinese

French students learning the Chinese language.

Yu Yannan, a 23-year-old student of Fujian Normal University, became one of the first international volunteer Chinese teachers, in a middle school in Manila. In her first class, she produced a drawing of ancient Chinese mathematician Zhang Heng’s seismograph, a groundbreaking scientific achievement of its time. The students – many of whom were of Chinese descent – had no idea what it was. When asked to describe the object, they answered “ashtray.” A year later, when Yu’s course came to an end, not only had her young students got a good grasp on the language, they had also developed an interest in Chinese poetry. In Chinese, they all exclaimed: “Through you, we learnt of Emperor Qin Shihuang and Emperor Wu. Through you we learnt how to make jiao zi and write Spring Festival couplets.” These volunteers pass on more than just language skills to their enthusiastic students – they also leave the young learners with a flavor of Chinese culture.

Rising Chinese language fever has spawned a great number of “classes” all across the world. Most are private, profit-oriented enterprises. In Seoul alone, there are 50 such businesses, run by overseas Chinese and foreigners. However, the students all-too-often learn old-style Chinese characters and use poorly constructed textbooks that include non-practical Chinese. The Confucius Institute, however, is a non-profit organization, dedicated to supplying foreign learners with the best materials for learning practical, contemporary Chinese. Among these is a multi-media course, called Great Wall Chinese. Tailor-made for foreign learners, it has been published in English, Russian, French, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

The Confucius Institute provides both conventional and online Chinese courses. In addition to general Chinese, the school has plans to develop specialized courses in highly sought-after areas such as medicine, business and tourism. It also plans to get involved with setting local HSK exams and issue certificates to local Chinese teachers.

Following the first in South Korea, more Confucius Institutes are set to open their doors in America, Europe, Asia and Africa. What’s more, the China Bridge program will soon enter full swing. It’s an extensive project that invites foreign experts to co-write textbooks, trains foreign Chinese teachers in China and sponsor HSK and other professional exams.