Not long after Chinese New Year, the Confucius Institute for Scotland expanded its outreach work to create more impact in Edinburgh. For five days the Institute, working with Edinburgh Zoo, organized a large promotional activity at one of the city’s biggest shopping center, known as the Gyle. Materials from Hanban were used to promote Chinese.cn as well as the the Institute’s own website, classes and cultural programme were all introduced to those residents and visitors to Edinburgh’s Gyle shopping centre..

During our outreach days, the website of Confucius Institute and Chinese.cn were displayed on a big screen which caught the attention of many citizens. Through our demonstration, visitors were introduced to www.chinese.cn and shown how to obtain the latest news, essence of Chinese culture and free language learning materials. Our chinese culture experience activity attracted a lot of visitors as well. Also very popular whenever they appeared were Edinburgh Zoo’s cuddly Panda Mascots which were greeted with delight by children and adults. After taking a snap shot with a Panda Mascot the children, along with their parents came to our exhibition booth to take part in other culture experience activities.

Over the five days of this promotion, many visitors were willing to take part in our short survey. Our analysis of the one hundred and sixty fully completed surveys showed that more than ninety percent of visitors believe that children should have the opportunity to learn Chinese in school and were willing to support their children to learn about China, and study Chinese.