The Chinese courses of Confucius Institute for Business at Matej Bel University (CIB at MBU) officially started on 24 Oct., 2019, just one week after the Chinese director and the Chinese teacher arrived in BanskaBystrica.

At 12:15, registered students crowded in the classroom dedicated to Chinese learning on the third floor of Faculty of Economics. They would be the first students to start their first lesson in the newly-decorated classroom.

Slovak Director Gabriela Kormancova introduces to the students the Chinese director and the Chinese teacher, and extends her warm welcome to the Chinese partners. Chinese Director Jianwei Wang greets the students with his newly learned Slovak, “Dobrýdeň”, and naturally encourages the students to learn Chinese. Jokingly, Mr Wang asks the students to make a comparison one day between the Chinese language and the Slovak language, the most difficult language to learn in their eyes, and may actually find out that Slovak is the most difficult language while Chinese is much easier. The Chinese teacher Bofang Qin makes an introduction to the teaching syllabus and the test arrangements.

“Ni Hao, Ni Hao Ma?” chanted out of the Chinese classroom on the ground floor of Faculty of Political Science and International Relations on the morning of 25 Oct. Students from the neighbourhood of Banska Bystrica and from Ukraine started their first Chinese class. Mr. Qin made a comparison of Chinese Pinyin and basic Slovak alphabetic letters so that the students can feel some basic Chinese pronunciation. He uses his own name as an illustration of the three components of a full Pinyin: initials, finals and tones. By the end of the class, students tend to agree that the Chinese language is not as difficult as imagined, and expect to write the Chinese characters.

On the same day in the afternoon, 12 UMB staff from Faculty of Economics, Faculty of Political Science and International Relations, MBU library and the Rectorate launched their journey to the Chinese language with excitement. Some of them have the experiences of visiting China. They raised their questions about China and the confusion of the tones of Chinese pronunciation. One question is “hanyu”, be it the Chinese language or the Korean language. Another is “hehe” and “haha” in their colloquial meaning. Taking the first final “ɑ” as an example, Mr. Qin visualized the differences of the four Pinyin tones with little stories. In their “haha”s, they understand that learning Chinese could be fun.

The shiny and comfy following Monday of 28 Oct. welcomes the students of the Chinese language at the intermediary level to their class. Some students had been to China for a semester or an academic year. After self-introduction in Chinese and getting familiar with each other, they started to share their experiences of learning and living in China. Thankfully, their Chinese are good. Hopefully, they’ll keep on learning and learn more about the Chinese culture and the Chinese people.

The Chinese courses are one of the key programmes of CIB MBU. The Chinese courses for MBU students have been adopted into the MBU credit system. By the end of the semester, the students will obtain the corresponding credits once they meet the requirements of the courses. In the future, CIB will tailor more courses with business characteristics, host the economic and cultural exchange programmes, and strive to become a window for mutual understanding and a platform for further cooperation between China and Slovakia.