My impression of the Confucius Institute
So, last year, in order to learn Mandarin Chinese, I decided to enroll at my local Confucius Institute.
For those of you who do not know what a Confucius Institute is, it is the People's Republic of China's (PRC) 【中华人民共和国】 cultural and educational centres. They are the chinese equivalent of France's "Institut Français" or Germany's "Goethe Institut" (but perhaps with less of a budget😅). They are usually attached to Universities (I find it extremely weird, but I also do not know why that is happening. Bare in mind: the USA decided to ban them from their public universities). There you can prepare yourself to take the HSK exams, aka the Mandarin language exams.
Eitherways, as I do not politically align with the PRC, I was unsure whether learning Chinese in those institutes was a smart choice.
I personally took the online lessons of the 1st level (A1 or HSK1) and was at a class of 6 people. In the first lesson, me and another classmate found out we had one thing in common: the Untamed. The next day came a new classmate. After introducing himself he said: I want to ask a question, who of you here have watched the Untamed? We giggled.
Our teacher was very young (under 30) and she came from Manchuria (although she herself was Han chinese). She had studied in one of China's C9 Universities. She really was the best teacher one could have ever wished for! Either ways, during our intermissions she always played for us chinese music and one time she played WuJi! We also wrote some teeny tiny essays and of course I included in mine WYB and XZ! How could I not! She asked me permission to post it and to send it to one of her friends! She also told me that in China their fans are called BXG!
【In my humble opinion, the Untamed succeeded in making China and learning Chinese more alluring to internationals. It would be smart if a second season were to happen....】
I have to mention: when we were introduced to China, Taiwan (or the Republic of China, ROC, 中华民国) was included on the map as part of the PRC (although in class we mention it as Taiwan, like a different country?). We also hardly ever mentioned politics, and when we did it was because of the students' questions and curiosity. They do not try to proselytise you. Something that I was really afraid of.
*Funny story: we were learning the names of countries (like china=中国, japan=日本, america=美国) and I wanted to ask about China's neighbours (Korea, India, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Bhutan, Nepal etc). I somehow managed to mix up Nepal with Tibet and so I ended up asking: and what is Tibet called? My teacher laughed and said Tibet is not a country and it is China's autonomous region. Guys I got so embarrassed! (Although it was not exactly a mistake?) But this is how we ended up learning the names of some of China's provinces, so.....
I would definitely recommend to go learn Mandarin Chinese at a Confucius Institute!
That's all guys! Perhaps I'll make another post rwgarsing my experience at the Confucius Institute in the future. Hope you found out something new.😊
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