Fate Comes Thousands of Miles to Meet — Chinese Lessons for Foreign Students in Riga 34 Middle School

On December 13, 2022 local time, a group of exchange students from Romania, Poland, Spain, Türkiye and other countries from Riga 34 Middle School in Latvia came to the Confucius Classroom. Volunteer teacher Wang Beiya and local teacher Ivetta brought them a unique Chinese class. When the students walked into the classroom, they were surprised to find that there were very beautiful Chinese objects in the display cabinet at the side, with Chinese characters and pinyin on the wall, lanterns on the ceiling, and Chinese paper cuts and books on the back.

At the beginning of the course, volunteer teacher Wang Beiya introduced her name and taught the students “Hello”, “Thank you” and “Goodbye”. The students are very active and speak loudly. Then, the volunteer teacher explained that next year is the Year of the Rabbit, and then took the students to make a rabbit paper-cut. The students followed the teacher step by step very seriously, and finally all the students had their own paper-cut bunnies. After that, the volunteer teacher took everyone to learn calligraphy. First, the teacher introduced Chinese calligraphy, gave everyone a Chinese brush, Xuan paper and felt, and then taught them how to hold a pen, how to dip in Chinese ink, and how to write one, two, and three. The students were very happy, wrote a lot of one, two, and three1,, and held them up for the teacher to see, hoping to be praised by the teacher. In the last five minutes, the teacher said that he could write any Chinese character he wanted. Some students wrote about “zhongguo”, and some students wrote “zaijian”. They were very happy. After class, many students refused to leave for a long time. They said they wanted to continue to take Chinese lessons.

The small Chinese classroom has gathered students from many countries who love Chinese, which is really called “a chance to meet thousands of miles away”. People’s love of Chinese is the best chance to meet each other.

当地时间2022年12月13日，拉脱维亚里加34中学的一批来自罗马尼亚、波兰、西班牙、土耳其等国的交换生来到孔子课堂，志愿者老师汪贝娅和本土教师艾维塔给他们带来了一堂别开生面的汉语课。当学生们走进教室，他们惊奇的发现，边上的展示柜里有非常美丽的中国物品，墙上贴着汉字和拼音，天花板上还挂着灯笼，后面放着中国的剪纸和书籍。

课程一开始，志愿者教师汪贝娅先介绍了自己的名字，并且教学生们“你好”“谢谢”“再见”。学生们特别积极，说得很大声。接着，志愿者老师向大家解释明年是兔年，然后带着同学们做一个兔子的剪纸，同学们非常认真的一步一步跟着老师做，最后所有学生都拥有了自己的剪纸小兔子。之后，志愿者老师又带着大家学习书法，首先老师介绍了中国的书法，并且给每个人毛笔，宣纸和毛毡，然后教他们怎样握笔、怎么蘸墨汁、怎么写一、二、三。学生们特别开心，写了很多的一二三，并且举起来给老师看，希望得到老师的表扬。最后五分钟，老师说可以写自己想写的任何汉字，有的学生写了中国，有的学生写了再见，他们都特别开心。在下课了之后，有很多学生久久不愿离去，他们说还想再继续上中文课。

小小的中文课堂，聚集了热爱中文的多国学生，真所谓“有缘千里来相会”。人们对中文的喜爱，就是使大家相遇的最好的缘分。