Dalhousie brings China to Halifax

Professor opens door to Chinese culture

Teresa Cyrus delivers a talk titled Travelling Tales: Home Style Tofu: A Vegetarian in China during the Chinese Speakers Series. Photo: Gloria Henriquez

Dalhousie University Chinese Studies professor Shao-Pin Luo is bringing China to Halifax.

The Chinese Speakers Series is a collection of extracurricular activities to motivate Chinese Studies students and the wider university community.

The goal is to reinforce Chinese language skills and immerse participants in Chinese culture.

"It's a great idea," says Mitchell Cohen, a 20-year-old English major at the University of Kings College and one of Luo's Chinese students.

"There is more of a reason for students to show up to the events that interest them, along with people from campus and the Halifax community who are not Chinese students."

The series, in its first year, started with Niko Bell's experiences on the Han yu qiao Chinese TV show.

The show is a Chinese speech competition between international university and college students. Bell competed against 120 college students from around the world. He made it into the top 30 and won a full scholarship in a Chinese university of his choice. Niko, an arts student at Dal, also took Chinese studies.

"I'm proud beyond words," Luo said.

At the end of September, students celebrated the Moon Festival. They had moon cakes and drank tea while they had their first Chinese Conversation Club of the year. The club is an informal forum where students practice talking, singing and playing games in Chinese. It has been held since 2006.

"Niko's presentation was definitely an eye-opener," Cohen said. "There aren't too many other Westerners who have had an inside look at the workings of Chinese reality TV. Of course, I also enjoyed stuffing my face with moon cakes for the harvest festival."

Luo says up to 40 people have been showing up to the series. Most students come from Chinese studies, but faculty and other students around campus attend as well.

Learning the moves of tai chi, the psycholinguistics behind Chinese and the art of Chinese calligraphy are on the fall agenda. Chinese philosophy, sociology, economy and even travel will be discussed as well.

Prof. Michael Ungar, of Dalhousie's School of Sociology, is teaching the sociology workshop Nov. 25.

"We want to understand how young people cope in this changing world, and if there are uniquely Chinese ways of managing these transitions."

Ungar, one of Luo's former students, thinks the series is a great idea since it brings focus to China studies that are increasingly important to Westerners.

Chinese is a difficult language, but it's worth the effort to learn. One simply can not ignore more than a billion people whose first language is Chinese. According to the 2008 CIA Factbook, there are about 1.3 billion Chinese speakers in China.

In 2001, Statistics Canada reports, more than one million Chinese speakers lived in Canada. That year, Chinese speakers represented about four percent of the total Canadian population.

"China is going to emerge as a major international force and the more we understand their culture, the better it is for a globalized economic order," Professor Ungar said. "There is also a lot of culture to learn from China and as a social scientist, this is critical."

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