On the afternoon of October 16, 2015, about 20 faculty members and the International Faculty Club of Peking University attended the first activity of this semester to experience Chinese culture.

Around 2pm, the faculty members arrived at the pavilion near Weiming Lake and received a lecture regarding the “Nine times nine dispelling the coldness”, a traditional picture of China, which is used to record the weather changes after ‘the winter solstice’ and to foretell the following year’s harvest. Interested by the picture, the faculty members decided to draw the picture in order to understand Chinese culture better.

The topic of this activity is to know Chinese culture. First of all, Shen Huiqin, a freshman from the Guanghua School of Management, gave a brief introduction of the volunteer team and extended a warm welcome to all the faculty members present. She used excellent oral English to teach the faculty members Chinese idioms to help them better understand and appreciate Chinese language and culture.

Following Shen’s presentation, Chen Ge, an officer at the Office of International Relations of Peking University introduced the 23 initials and 36 finals of Mandarin Chinese. With her patient instruction, the faculty members tried to write some difficult words and the names of tourist attractions at Peking University. Moreover, Ms. Chen prepared some fine gifts to encourage the faculty members to write long sentences, which piqued the faculty members’ interest and made the whole atmosphere relaxed and pleasant.

After a ten-minute break, we were honored to have Yang Zhao, Dean of the School of Chinese as a Second Language, to give a speech about ‘the life of common speech’. This humorous gentleman started with an explanation of the ’10 stereotypes of China’, listing foreigners’ misunderstandings of China due to the lack of communication, which caused the faculty members to laugh aloud. With his enriched experience of studying and travelling abroad and his full understanding of the special connection between Chinese and foreign cultures, Dean Zhao distinguished the official language of China, introduced some ethnic languages and dialects according to their geographical characteristics, and explained the development of Mandarin Chinese. At last, he analyzed the pros and cons of using Mandarin Chinese as the national language. The faculty members listened eagerly to Dean Zhao’s explanation of the differences and connections between Mandarin Chinese, dialects, and other ethnic languages.

When the activity ended, many of the faculty members stayed and chatted with Dean Zhao. They discussed about how to practice Mandarin, and Dean Zhao taught them some everyday greetings. They spoke highly of today’s activity, and exchanged opinions and feelings with each other. With such a fantastic start, the following activities will certainly be even better. As Confucius stated, ‘It is such a delight to have a friend from far away’, and we extend a warm welcome to our international faculty members. We believe that we can try our best to help them better understand the vast and profound Chinese culture.