Communication: Happiness is a struggle – the story of Justast, an Iraqi internet celebrity who taught Chinese in Baghdad

Xinhua News Agency, Baghdad, January 21 Newsletter: Happiness is a struggle - the story of Iraqi Internet celebrity Justa, who taught Chinese in Baghdad

Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Miao Dong Yalei

Under the COVID-19 pandemic, he is a foreign student who insists on online classes and a teacher who teaches Chinese in his hometown of Baghdad, Iraq. From medical college students to location hosts and video bloggers, the favorite sentence of 24-year-old Iraqi Internet celebrity and international student Juste is "happiness is a struggle".

Just's Arabic name is Sajad Haider Kazaz. After the outbreak of the Iraq War in 2003, as a young man, he was on the move in Syria with his family. In 2015, 18-year-old Jia Side followed his parents to Yiwu to do business, and China has become his second hometown ever since.

In 2017, he entered the Clinical Professional Study of the School of International Education of Hunan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine with excellent results. With the increasing level of Mandarin, Jia Side, who speaks with a loud voice, started from the host of the school's welcome party, successively participated in the Hunan Provincial College Students Literary and Art Performance, the International Student Chinese Poetry Competition, and also had the opportunity to serve as a location host in the "World See Hunan" column of Hunan Satellite TV International Channel.

Following the program group into the countryside of Hunan, Jia Side visited the eighteen-hole village of Huayuan County, Hunan Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, and other typical examples of poverty alleviation, and paid attention to China's rural revitalization and interpreted China's poverty alleviation code from the perspective of foreigners. Seeing the earth-shaking changes that have taken place in the depths of the once impoverished mountains, Justush is deeply moved and remembers his hometown, "The situation in Iraq is not good now, but I hope that we will develop like the eighteen-hole village."

At the end of last year, the Chinese training course held by the Iran-China Friendship Association was officially launched, and Justa, who was stranded in Iraq due to the epidemic and had a standard Mandarin pronunciation standard, became a teacher Chinese. Baghdad established its first Chinese training institution. Among the more than a dozen trainees were foreign trade merchants, students planning to study in China, and people interested in Chinese culture.

In the classroom, Justa explained the words in the textbook to the students in Arabic, and the blackboard was often full of pinyin and Arabic annotations, answering the students' questions at any time. In order to improve the level of dialogue among the students, he also invited Chinese friends in Baghdad to the classroom to practice dialogue and communication with the students.

His teaching was recognized by his students. Moussa, a 44-year-old trainee, is in the electronics import business and attends the Canton Fair every year before the epidemic. He first studied online with Justus, and now attends offline training three times a week. He said he hoped that after the epidemic was over, he could try to exchange Chinese in China.

Due to the epidemic, Justin said that he took online classes in Iraq for two years, looking forward to returning to China to continue his studies as soon as possible. "I'm a medical student now and I'm probably going to be a doctor in the future. My dream is cultural exchange, to bring Chinese culture to Iraq, and also to bring Iraqi culture to China. ”

On social media, Justin has gained a lot of fans. Chinese netizens like this handsome Iraqi guy to open a live broadcast, watch him speak authentic Chinese, eat stinky tofu, spicy strips and other special foods. Foreign netizens also praised the Chinese stories he shared. On TikTok, a short video about China's aerospace project in Arabic garnered nearly 400,000 views.

As the Lunar New Year approached, Justa sent her blessings in standard Mandarin: "I am in Iraq to pay you a New Year's greeting, I wish you a happy Spring Festival, a happy heart, a happy happiness, good health and health!" I hope the epidemic ends soon! (End)