Confucius Institute at the University of Latvia successfully held the “Chinese Religious Culture” lecture

On November 7th 2014, there was still some time before the lecture began. However, the Classroom 410 of Confucius Institute at University of Latvia was already crowded with people. Although it was Friday with light rain, but it didn’t extinguish anyone’s enthusiastic expectation on this lecture.
This cultural lecture was a series of lectures launched by Confucius Institute at University of Latvia, mainly about Chinese religious culture. The speaker was the Chinese director of Confucius Institute at the University of Latvia Professor Shang Quanyu. After greeting and introduction, the lecture started. Professor Shang first gave a simple introduction to the 13 kinds of religions in the world through interaction with audience. Then he showed nine themes of this Chinese Religious Culture lecture series, namely: a. The main religions ; b. Confucius study or Confucianism; c. Buddhism; d. Taoism; e. Three religions’ confluence; f. Christian; g. Islam; h. Religion and Chinese vocabulary; i. Current situation of faith and the religion challenge. During the lecture, Professor Shang specially counted these nine themes in to narrow the distance with the audience.
After a basic introduction to five major religions in China, Professor Shang began to explain Chinese Confucianism. Professor Shang talked about the life and contribution of Confucius, their story of travelling around the countries, Confucius’s thoughts of “benevolence” and “ceremony “in The Analects, hundred schools of thought in Chunqiu, Fenshukengru in Qin Dynasty and domination of Confucianism in Western han…… Professor Shang explained the history of the development of Confucianism to let people have a deeper and clearer understanding of Confucianism. Among the audience were not only pupils of seven years old , but also Chinese learners over forty; not Confucius Institute teachers and students, but also students of the University of Latvia and Riga Law College, as well as people who are interested Chinese culture. During the one and a half-hour lecture, the audience of more than 50 people are all preoccupied. Many audience even did a lot of lecture recording. After the professor’s talking, the audience raised many questions. Professor answered them one by one. Finally, in the warm and prolonged applause, the first lecture of “Chinese religious culture lecture series” successfully concluded.
After that, audience said that such seminars are very meaningful and interesting. First of all, people are very interested in this topic but usually don’t have chance to know more about it. Professor Shang’s professional and vivid explanation helped people to have a deeper understanding of Confucianism. Secondly, the lecture was given in English so that all people who are interested in Chinese culture are able to participate in this religious culture feast. Finally, Professor Shang combined culture teaching with language teaching. There was a volunteer teacher writing Chinese characters, Pinyin and English meaning on the blackboard while professor was talking. So the audience learned not only culture, but also learnt commonly used Chinese characters and authentic Chinese saying. Audience said that they were very enjoyable to hear this lecture and learnt a lot. They were really looking forward to the next lecture and hoped it would be held as soon as possible.