The past and future of teaching Chinese in Portugal
A few days ago I passed by Avenida 5 de Outubro, 115, headquarters of the Economic and Commercial Delegation of Macau, former Macau Mission in Lisbon. The old image of a long line that went around the corner with Pastelaria Tim-Tim, first thing in the morning, came to my mind with regret. They were the people who were waiting for the opening of In at 9 am, for enrollment in the Chinese Course. This scene was repeated annually, for many years, at the door of the Institution, a pioneer in the teaching of Mandarin in Portugal.
We should go back a little in history. During several centuries of the Portuguese administration in Macau, neither Portuguese teaching was proposed in the territory, a situation that was only changed when the two English bodies created the Joint Declaration on the Question of Macau. There were two great waves of enchantment in language learning, Portuguese by the Chinese in Macau and Chinese by the locals in Portugal.
After working for more than ten years at the University of Shanghai and two years in Macau, teaching English, I came to Portugal in the early 90’s, welcoming two waves with open arms. My husband and I, Lu Yanbin, were invited by the Mission, first to give support classes, in Portuguese, to Macao scholarship holders enrolled in various courses in Portugal and then also Chinese classes, investigated for the locals. The two courses were successful, being the Portuguese course extended to all Chinese in Lisbon and the Chinese community, expanded in the course of the Delegation in the course of the CCCM.
For 30 years, Portugal’s paths have crossed “continuous village in this China”, with the most global languages of China, a growing interest in mutual learning between two peoples. Today, Chinese courses are available throughout Portugal and courses at all levels of education. And in China, from south and east to west, there are about 60 universities that teach Portuguese with graduates working between China and the Portuguese-speaking world, with only two degrees, one in Beijing and the other in Shanghai, when in contrast to teaching Portuguese. in 1977.
Being a bilingual Chinese/Portuguese person is fantastic! They are two of the most spoken languages in the world and the number of their speakers exceeds a fifth of the world’s population! Because I can speak Portuguese, I never felt like a foreigner from the first day on Portuguese soil. “The relationship between countries consists of friendship between peoples and this consistency in the harmony of theirs.” Tongue is undoubtedly effective in achieving this friendship and adjustment.
Therefore, in a colloquium on The language of Camões, when answering the question Who will speak Portuguese in the future, I intervened: “It will undoubtedly include the Chinese who will work with the Portuguese language and the large Chinese community spread across the Portuguese-speaking world. ” In another colloquium on the teaching of Mandarin and Patuá, my son Lu Yang and I defended our intervention: To improve the promotion of Chinese teaching in Portugal, it is essential to train local teachers, with concrete training and qualification measures, it is any studied Chinese nor any Portuguese who has Chinese who can read the Chinese language.
Having spanned three decades today, the 1st Forum on Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in Portugal, which will take place at CCCM, on October 14th and tomorrow, broadcast via Zoom.
On the 1st day there will be an opening session, with the exhibition Êxitos de Ensino de Chinês em Portugal. On the 2nd day, the lectures in Chinese by the three invited experts stand out: Prof. Federico Masini, Italian sinologist, linguist and translator, vice-rector of the University of Rome and vice-president of the International Society for Chinese Language Teaching (ISCLT); Juan Alférez, sinologist, linguist and Spanish translator and Spanish Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Granada; and Liu Lening, linguist, director of the Chinese Studies Center at Columbia University (USA) and member of the ISCLT Permanent Council.
These three names are not strange to me, as the fluency with which Italian and Spanish speak Chinese is famous. Masini talk about the local teaching of Italian teaching of Chinese in the program of more than 80 public secondary schools and 300 public secondary schools and their elaboration with the books edited by the CCCM, listen to Prof. Liu talk about teaching-learning methods and Prof. Alférez on the challenge of teaching Chinese in the face of the distance between languages, writings and cultures.
Today there are so many Chinese and Portuguese teaching Portuguese in China and Chinese in Portugal. I hope to see in the future, among them, some Portuguese sinologists comparable to Prof. Masini and Prof. Alférez, to honor the centuries-old exchange between China and Portugal! The task is hard and the way to go is long. But let’s work hard to reach the goal!
Retired Professor at the University of Aveiro and President of the Portuguese Association of Friends of Chinese Culture