Confucius Institutes bridge cultural gap
Classes, workshops and arts helping Filipinos get to know China better
Known as China’s overseas cultural ambassadors, Confucius Institutes are instrumental in promoting Chinese arts and culture in the Philippines.
Representatives of the Confucius Institute’s partner schools in the Philippines said that despite the centuries-long relations between the two neighbors and the presence of a huge Chinese-Filipino community, most Filipinos don’t understand Chinese culture.
But CI, which arrived in the Philippines in 2006, introduced regular classes and workshops in Putonghua, Chinese brush painting, calligraphy and traditional Chinese medicine. This has deepened the Filipinos’ knowledge of Chinese culture, helping them to appreciate China’s contribution to the Philippine way of life.
CI now has four partner schools in the Philippines — Ateneo de Manila University, University of the Philippines Diliman, Bulacan State University, and Angeles University Foundation.
“Through language and culture, it’s easier for people to understand China better,” said Lourdes Tanhueco-Nepomuceno, director of the Confucius Institute at University of the Philippines Diliman.
CI-UPD was established in 2015 through a collaboration between the Philippines’ premier state university, Xiamen University in East China’s Fujian province, and Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters.
Nepomuceno said most of CI-UPD’s Chinese language courses helped in “facilitating people-to-people exchange”.
“Our students’ perception about China changed (after taking these courses). There’s a paradigm shift in the way they think about China,” she said.
Nepomuceno said most of CI-UPD’s students are lawyers and professionals who believe that fluency in Putonghua will bring them better career opportunities. She attributed this to China’s economic rise and the increasing number of Chinese companies investing in the Philippines.
While CI-UPD focuses on language classes, Nepomuceno said it also organizes symposiums and special events to promote a better understanding of Chinese art and culture.
She said these events are held during the Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival. Teachers and artisans are invited to conduct free demos and lectures on
traditional Chinese medicine, dumpling making, calligraphy, paper cutting and mask cutting.
526 schools worldwide
Named after China’s renowned philosopher and educator, the Confucius Institute is a nonprofit educational organization that works with universities worldwide to promote Chinese language and culture.
Chinese Language Council, or Hanban, a public institution affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education, administers Confucius Institutes.
The first CI was established in South Korea in 2004. There are now 526 Confucius Institutes in 147 countries, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency. By 2017, the number of CI students had reached 1.7 million, with a teacher population, both Chinese and local, of 46,000, it said.
The first CI in the Philippines was established at Ateneo de Manila University, one of the country’s top schools.
“Our vision is to promote Chinese culture to the mainstream Filipino society,” said Ellen Palanca, director of the Confucius Institute at the Ateneo de Manila University.
CI-ADMU, the first Confucius Institute in the Philippi- nes, has partnered with Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, in South China’s Guangdong province.
Palanca recalled that in the early stages of CI-ADMU, having 1,000 students enrolled in its language and culture classes for one year was already a good year for them.
“It was unfortunate that not many Filipinos realized the importance (of knowing Chinese language and culture). Even the Chinese-Filipinos here, they don’t really understand Chinese culture,” she said.
Things, however, changed in recent years and even surpassed Palanca’s expectations for CI-ADMU. In 2017 alone, CI-ADMU had 2,000 students enrolled in its language and culture courses. Demand was greater than that, she said, but the institute lacks the space to accommodate more students.
For Palanca, this indicates that CI-ADMU’s efforts are paying off. It not only runs language and culture classes, it has also organized art exhibits and symposiums and published books.
She added that increased opportunities to travel and better bilateral relations have ignited Filipinos’ interest in Chinese arts and culture.
Ceasar Cheng, who teaches weekend classes on Chinese brush painting at CI-ADMU, said the institute has helped in popularizing the art in the Philippines.
In the past, Cheng noted that Chinese brush painters like him were usually confined to Binondo, a district in the Philippine capital Manila known as the world’s oldest Chinatown.
But thanks to art exhibits organized by CI-ADMU, Cheng said people were becoming more familiar with the skill.
“These exhibits are held in shopping malls. That’s how we get art students. We also do free workshops during the exhibit,” Cheng said.
One of these students is lawyer Rizalde Laudencia. Laudencia has always been interested in Chinese arts and culture and decided to sign up for Cheng’s class in 2013.
“A Chinese painting is like a poem. It capsulizes a version of (a bigger) reality,” he said.
Our vision is to promote Chinese culture to the mainstream Filipino society.”
Ellen Palanca, CI director