CIUC Newsletter
December 2015
South Canterbury Multi-Cultural Festival
HSK/YCT examinations. Altogether, 377 prizes were
awarded.
Lincoln High School was awarded the ‘2015 Confucius
Classroom of the Year’ for it’s outstanding work in
promoting Chinese teaching in Selwyn District.
Photo: MLAs Ms DU Juan and Ms SHAN Tingfang perform at the
festival
In November, CIUC participated in the South Canterbury
International Festival. This year’s theme was the moon
festival. Visitors to CIUC’s exhibit were able to participate
in a number of hands on activities such as chopsticks
games and calligraphy, and to eat ‘yuebing’ or ‘moon
cakes’ – a traditional Chinese food eaten during the moon
festival. Altogether, over 3000 people attended the
festival. CIUC’s Mandarin Language Assistants DU Juan and
WEN Jing performed traditional Chinese dance and
guzheng respectively.
Photo: Consul-General JIN Zhijian with students receiving awards
Otago Chinese Prizegiving
Christchurch Chinese Prizegiving
On November 12, the 2015
Annual Chinese Prizegiving
of South Island New
Zealand was held at St
Margaret's
College,
Christchurch.
Distinguished
guests
present included JIN Zhijian,
the Consul-General of P R
China to Christchurch,
Jimmy Chen, Christchurch
City Councillor and Dr FU
Jiwei, NZ Chinese Language
Photo: Consul-General JIN National Advisor. In addition,
presenting Stephen Rout
more than 600 people,
with the clasroom award
including
principals,
teachers, students and
family members of the students from various schools and
universities in the South Island attended the prizegiving.
Students were given prizes for excellence in Chinese, the
calligraphy competition and for outstanding results in the
On 17 November, CIUC with the Confucius Classroom at
Columba College co-hosted the first Chinese Prizegiving in
Dunedin.
Columba College Principal Juliette Hayes gave a welcoming
speech, and then Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull spoke about
the historic relationship between Dunedin City and China,
and hoped that the friendship between New Zealand and
China will continue to be stable and sustainable. He also
encouraged the students to continue to study Chinese
language and culture and praised their efforts to date.
A total of 123 students from 28 primary, secondary and
tertiary schools were granted Chinese Excellence Awards,
and another 29 students received prizes in the New
Zealand Chinese Calligraphy Competition. A number of
principals drove their students for over an hour to attend
the ceremony. They said they wouldn’t let their students
miss this rare opportunity.
MLAs Farewell
Three New Confucius Classrooms Opened
On 28 November, CIUC held a farewell ceremony for
fourteen MLAs who are returning to China. ConsulGeneral JIN Zhijian presented them with certificates of
completion of service, and then they attended a dinner
together.
The returning MLAs had all worked very hard in New
Zealand and will be missed by staff and students.
CI FOCUS Lecture
Photo: Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull and Deputy Consul-General LI Xin
present plaques to the three new Confucius Classrooms
At the Otago Prizegiving, three new Confucius Classrooms
were presented with plaques. The new classrooms have
been opened at South Otago High School, Otago Girls’
High School and St Kevin’s College, Oamaru.
Deputy Consul General LI Xin first expressed his heartfelt
congratulations to the three new CI Classrooms. He then
spoke highly of the leading role Columba College
Confucius Classroom has played in Chinese language
teaching and learning. He hoped that the new three CI
Classrooms will also provide opportunities for Chinese
learning to both students and communities.
The 6th New Zealand Chinese Calligraphy Competition
This year, CIUC in
conjunction with ILEP held
the sixth nationwide
calligraphy competition.
The
competition
continues to grow in size,
with 821 works submitted
this year, of which 115
were awarded prizes.
Michael
Hayes
from
CIUC’s calligraphy class
took out the first prize for
Photo: Michael Hayes
the tertiary brush pen
winning artwork
category. He has been
studying calligraphy at the institute for three years.
On Sunday 29 November,
eminent Confucian scholar
Professor Xianglong Zhang
gave a lecture entitled “A
Philosophical Explanation of
the Confucian Position in
Inter-Cultural
Dialogue:
Finding Ultimate Truth in
Non-Universalism”. He is a
based at Peking University,
whilst concurrently serving
as a distinguished professor of philosophy at Shandong
University. He was previously director of the
Phenomenology Research Center, and former president of
the International Society for Comparative Studies of
Chinese
and
Western
Philosophy.
His lecture was part of the Confucius Institute Forum of
Cultural Understanding Series (CI FOCUS) of lectures and
was held in conjunction with the 21st New Zealand Asian
Studies Society Conference. Also present at the lecture
was the Consul-General of the P R China in Christchurch
JIN Zhijian, Jimmy Chen, Christchurch City Councillor and
academics from a broad range of disciplines.
Chinese Language in New Zealand Secondary Schools
Conference
CIUC, in conjuction with the other New Zealand Confucius
Institutes, the NZ China Council, the NZ Asia Foundation
and ILEP, co-hosted the Chinese Language in New Zealand
Secondary Schools conference. One of the keynote
speakers was Rachel Austen, from Lincoln High School.
The conference was well attended by principals and
Chinese teachers of schools around New Zealand/