Nanjing Normal University Hosts 2025 “International Chinese Language Day” Celebration
To celebrate the 2025 “International Chinese Language Day”, Nanjing Normal University organized themed activities titled "Chinese: A Gift Through Time and Space" across its overseas Confucius Institutes and Classrooms. As the City Council of Mendoza, Argentina in the southern hemisphere passed a legislative motion in honor of the day, German students in the northern hemisphere were reciting Tang and Song poems aboard a cruise on the Yangtze River. With this creative classroom spanning two continents, NNU presented a "Tale of Two Cities" in international Chinese language education.
The Mendoza City Council of Argentina has recently passed legislation to celebrate the 2025 “International Chinese Language Day”. The resolution was jointly announced by Franco Gennari, a city government official, and Dr. Susana Palmieri, a city council member, during an event hosted by the Confucius Institute at Universidad del Congreso to mark this occasion. The event featured interactive cultural workshops such as Chinese calligraphy, jianzi (shuttlecock kicking), paper-cutting, tongue-twister challenges, table tennis, and ring-toss games. While sipping on yerba mate tea, students engaged in these cultural activities from the East and enthusiastically remarked that "the two go perfectly together.”
Just before the Mendoza City Council solemnly struck the gavel to officially announce the celebration of the 2025 “International Chinese Language Day”, the Nanjing "Yangtze Love" cruise ship was gently gliding across the river with German students from the Hanhua Confucius Classroom. These two cultural encounters, separated by 20,000 kilometers, together highlight the vibrant vitality of international Chinese language education.
As the "Yangtze Love" cruise ship set sail, Jiao Jiajia from the Experimental School Affiliated to Nanjing Normal University began a special Chinese language class aboard. With oracle bone script flashcards, she transformed German students into "Chinese character detectives". The evolution of the character "江" (river) was illustrated vividly against the backdrop of sky and water. With animated explanations, she unraveled the layers of meaning and form embedded in Chinese characters. The students were amazed, exclaiming, "Every Chinese character is a talking picture!"
The bright colors of "at sunrise riverside flowers redder than fire" and the magnificence of "the endless river rolls its waves hour after hour" came to life as the foreign students recited the verses, breathing new vitality into the classical Chinese poetry. One teenager exclaimed, "Reading these lines, I feel like the ancient poets are standing right here on the deck with us!" During the Wish Card activity, some students wrote "I love the Yangtze River" with their childish strokes, while others penned wishes like "good luck in your studies" and dropped them into a time-traveling mailbox. These culturally rich cards are now set to embark on a new journey across the seas.
Bringing the Chinese language to life and into the spotlight. When German teenagers eloquently share stories of the Yangtze River, and Argentinean students gracefully write "Though far apart, we are close at heart,” the world is witnessing that Chinese is not merely a tool for communication, but also a key to unlocking the vast treasures of a 5,000-year-old civilization. The secret to expanding the reach of international Chinese language education lies in the innovative practice of "letting the scene speak and bring the classics to life". From the legislative support of Mendoza to the poetic classroom on the Yangtze River, we have always put into practice the concept of "cultural localization". When Chinese education transcends textbooks to become a tangible, immersive journey, it becomes the most beautiful expression of mutual learning between civilizations.