More and more people in the hometown of Matteo ricci begin to study Chinese
On September 11, Confucius Institute at the University of Macerata, Italy made a contract with 12 secondary schools as teaching sites. The school numbers almost doubled over last year, and the class numbers of Chinese lesson amounted to over 27. Moreover, one of the secondary schools listed Chinese as compulsory course.
As the hometown of the well-known missionary Matteo Ricci, the Italian central mountain city Macerata has 40000 permanent residents, among whom more than 400 people start to learn Chinese each year. 12 Chinese teaching sites have been established there within two years from the opening of Confucius Institute at the University of Macerata. On the streets of Macerata, you can obviously feel the local identity to Chinese culture.
The president of Macerata University Luigi Laak said, the Confucius Classroom located in Macerata and its surrounding towns, in which a backbone of the economy was industrial output, while China was an important destination country of its exports, so a major reason why the local young people were eager to learn Chinese was that they intended to lay the foundation for looking for a job. Meanwhile as the missionary Matteo Ricci had left an imprint on the history of Sino-Western exchanges, and there were frequent cultural exchanges with China. The residents had a good impression on China.
Laak said that the established Confucius Classrooms at the present stage were like the seeds to be cultivated, as the students there were likely to enter the Department of Chinese in the University of Macerata to learn Chinese after their graduation to better develop the local trade, cultural exchanges with China.
As was introduced by Chinese president of Confucius Institue in Macerata Yan Chunyou, the teachers here not only taught Chinese but also set up calligraphy class in Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Macerata and a national high school.
The priest Ricci was an Italian Catholic Jesuit missionary, he brought Western Catholic thought into China in the 1580s, living and studying in China for 28 years. He died in Beijing in 1610, and made a positive contribution to the Exchange of Sino-Italian culture and religion in his life.