The opening ceremony of “You and Me, in Beijing” 2015 BFSU Summer Camp was held in Beijing Institute of Education on July 13, 2015. This summer camp was hosted by Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban) and Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), and co-organized by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) and Beijing Institute of Education. Yan Guohua, Vice President of BFSU, Wang Feng, Deputy Director of the Third Division at the Confucius Institute, Hanban, Xu Xiuzhi, Vice President of FLTRP, Lu Hui, Vice President of Beijing Institute of Education, and diplomats from the Hungarian, Spanish, Austrian, German and Russian Embassies in China attended the opening ceremony. The ceremony was hosted by Zhang Xiaohui, Director of the Office of Confucius Institute at BFSU.
Vice President Yan Guohua delivered welcome to all the campers and teachers in his speech, and pointed out that “You and Me” BFSU Summer Camp is a brand program in the promotion of Chinese language worldwide, and had turned into a long-lasting platform for advancing interaction among international youths. Deputy Director Wang Feng expressed his wish that campers could cherish this opportunity to learn Chinese language, experience Chinese culture and build friendship in the course of learning and exchange.
Lang Tian, teacher representative from Confucius Institute in Krakow, Poland, and Maria, camper representative from Confucius Institute at Moscow State University of Language in Russia, gave speeches in fluent Chinese respectively, in which they expressed strong interest in Chinese language and culture, and their wish to take the opportunity of this summer camp to experience Chinese culture. After that, guests at the opening ceremony presented teams from different nations with flags for the beginning of the 10-day summer camp.
Attendants of this summer camp include more than 100 middle school students and teachers from 8 countries, i.e. Britain, Germany, Spain, Russia, Hungary, Belgium, Austria and Poland. With the purpose of “promoting cultural exchanges and cultivating international perspective among youths from different nations”, a series of interesting linguistic and cultural activities have been launched, including meet-and-greet meetings between Chinese and foreign students, cultural exchanges, Teams’ Night, Chinese language class, cultural experience class, cultural trip and visits to Chinese families. Students from home and abroad can experience traditional Chinese culture, understand modern Chinese civilization, and build friendship through interactions among different cultures and ideologies in a relaxed atmosphere with lively theme activities.
It is the 8thsummer camp for international middle school students co-organized by BFSU and Hanban. It has attracted more than 700 middle school students from 14 countries over Europe, Asia and America to Beijing to start their journey in China. Various activities during the summer camp have recorded the campers’ youth, passion and ideals, aroused their interest in learning Chinese language and culture, and offered them an opportunity to experience multi-national, multi-language and multi-ethnic cultures. The camp is widely accepted and supported by Confucius Institutes in different countries.
