Royals turn their hands to learning Chinese

Updated: 2016-07-26 07:53

By Fu Jing in Brussels(China Daily)

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It shows evidence of a growing trend that Chinese is becoming more popular globally

The Dutch are pleased with a recent announcement that King Willem-Alexander's daughter Catharina-Amalia, the 13-year-old heir to the throne, is about to learn Chinese in the upcoming semester in The Hague, where they live.

Some have even dubbed this the royal family's "smartest investment", pointing out the enhanced bilateral relationship between China and the Netherlands.

Such a move has already happened in the neighboring Belgian monarchy. Elisabeth, Princess of Belgium, was born in 2001, the first child of King Philippe. She has already studied Chinese in a Dutch-speaking school in Brussels. And when her father acceded to the throne in 2013, the Princess became Duchess of Brabant, a title reserved for the heir apparent.

Elisabeth is also likely to become a queen that can speak Chinese as long as she can endure the difficulties of learning a language harder than her mother tongue.

Long tradition

In fact, the older generation of royal families in Europe have a long tradition in immersing themselves in Chinese culture.

Although Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who just celebrated her 90th birthday this year, doesn't speak Chinese, she has enormous interests in Chinese beliefs, especially Taoism and the tradition of longevity, a prime Chinese value.

This month, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, partly supported by the UK royal family, set up an Academy of Sinology, with the goal of nurturing doctorate students studying ancient Chinese religions, texts, language and history.

Meanwhile, the Danish monarchy is another European royal family which has shown a keen enthusiasm over China, its culture and language. Apart from Danish, French and English, Chinese is among the four languages used on the royal family's website since 2014.

Queen Margrethe II, of Denmark, aged 76, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Belgium's King Philippe have already paid visits to China after Xi Jinping was elected as president. Xi has visited the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom since early 2014.

Studying Chinese is becoming popular across Europe.

During the Greek debt crisis, when I was interviewing parliamentarians in Greece, one of them even arranged for his 16-year-old daughter, who was learning Chinese, to sit in on the one-hour interview session. And within European institutions, Chinese-language training courses are routinely offered to young officials.

On July 21, when I was immersing myself in the crowds for the Belgian National Day parade, a retired Belgian man stopped me, telling me that, when he was young, he studied Chinese in Taiwan for a few years and spent more than ten years in the mainland. I was astonished by his fluency in Chinese and excellent mastering of the Chinese way of communication.

This all shows evidence of a growing trend that Chinese is becoming more popular globally because of the attractions of Chinese civilization and the country's modernization in recent decades. Such trends merit an innovative response from China.

The UK, United States, Canada, Japan, France and other countries have already set up many schools in China with their own curriculum and their experiences should be copied as China extends its presence globally. All in all, starting from kindergarten to universities, China should consider "smart investment" in overseas education.

That should be part of the mission for China's new minister of education, Chen Baosheng, who started to work in this position just this month.

fujing@chinadaily.com.cn

Royals turn their hands to learning Chinese

(China Daily 07/26/2016 page10)

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