Enjoying the fruit of the past decade

ISTARTED to work closely with the Confucius Institute (CI) at Mona, The University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2016, when I was appointed as the director of the CI administrative office at Taiyuan University of Technology. Through communication with both the Chinese and Jamaican directors, the work and activities at the CI interested me. The opportunity to visit Mona in June 2017 solidified my imagination and indirect knowledge of this dreamland. Such mature Chinese programmes, such a pretty campus, such a beautiful country.

Thanks to directors Dr Courtney Hogarth, Prof Lu Shaogang, and Prof Yu Wansuo, who have contributed so much to the management of the CI, we can see and enjoy the fruit of the past decade. My colleagues Shen Xiaoyan, Liang Yingping, and Dong Xiaoming, together with other Chinese lecturers and volunteers, through their dedication to the teaching, laid a solid foundation for the Chinese language program.

In China, I welcomed a group of Jamaican high-school principals and administrators. I taught a number of Jamaican students from The UWI, Mona, a few of whom I made friends with. I was so glad to learn that one of them even continued to study the textbook that we used in China. Now, I am in Mona again, not as a visitor but as a resident. On the way to moving into our newly finished CI building under the new campus leadership and with our new team comprising of Keneisha Sappleton, Guo Zhouya, Wu Runxia, and Dr Li Kailin, I feel very confident that the CI at Mona is going to be taken to a new level of development.

FENG LEI, PhD

Chinese Director University of the West Indies Confucius Institute, Mona