China students say ‘marhaba’ to increase in Arabic courses
▶ Students believe that mastering the language is good for their job prospects
When Luo Zi Wei was deciding what language to study, Spanish was the most popular course at her university and Arabic the least.
But the week before she made her decision, the Arabic lecturer gave a passionate speech listing the benefits of learning the language: good job prospects and the challenge of studying the hardest language in the world.
Ms Luo was persuaded. That was five years ago. Now she is part of a growing number of young Chinese who are choosing Arabic as the foreign language to study at university.
Lin Feng Min, director of Arabic at Peking University’s language school, said 20 per cent more national test papers had to be printed in the past three years.
Ms Luo, 24, graduated in Arabic literature from Sun YatSen University, in Guangdong Province, last year. The semester she spent in Jordan was revealing. “It’s not so conservative,” she said. “Teachers and Jordanians were open-minded. Many Muslim women chose not to wear the hijab.”
But the Jordanians she met knew little about China. So why study Arabic?
Mr Lin said most students chose to study the language because they felt it led to better career opportunities, while others were interested in Arabic culture. Some are Chinese Muslims who want to learn more about Islamic culture and traditions.
Han Yiying, 20, a third-year student at Peking University, said it was Arabic music that inspired her to learn the language.
“Its grammar and some pronunciation of some letters are totally different from Chinese or English so I found it hard to begin learning Arabic, but it got easier after I got used to the grammar,” Ms Han said.
She hopes to work in the ministry of foreign affairs.
Fang Ting, 30, works for the Red Cross in Beijing and studied Arabic for a year in Yemen in 2014. He said it took him three months to learn how to produce the distinctive “glottal trembling” required for Arabic – and then he hit another obstacle.
“I learnt standard Arabic but when you go on the street people speak dialect,” Mr Fang said. “This is a problem when there is limited dialectal teaching or material.”
Mr Lin agreed that coping with the various Arabic dialects was “really a big problem”. In an attempt to tackle it, the Arabic department at Peking University introduced a Cairodialect module.
Zhang Bo, 32, a news anchor for TV station CGTN Arabic, said the opportunities for Arabic speakers in China had increased since he graduated in 2007, not least with more international media catering to Arabic-speaking audiences.
Mr Zhang almost dropped Arabic when he was at Beijing Foreign Studies University because the language was so difficult, but he is glad he stuck it out.
“The process of learning Arabic in college helped me gain a capability in overcoming any difficulty in life,” he said. “If I could conquer this language to some extent I could achieve anything.”
Many Chinese students of Arabic base themselves in Cairo. Duan Jiuzhou is a PhD student from Tsinghua University and a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo.
Mr Duan said the historical relationship between Egypt and China – the first Chinese students arrived in the 1930s – accounts for its enduring legacy as a centre of Arabic scholarship for the Chinese.
Mr Zhang sees the One Belt, One Road initiative, which will cross many Arabic-speaking countries, as offering big opportunities. And in his line of work, the region is a hot spot for news.
But Mr Lin is worried about the future. Although the amount of Arabic courses increased, the number of teachers had not and many are young and inexperienced. “Teaching quality is declining,” he said.
But Mr Duan wants to become a professor of Arabic: “It is exotic and widely spoken. I love it.”