Source: China Overseas Chinese Network
Li Hongchuan, principal of the Chinese School in Malaga, Spain, has lived overseas for nearly 40 years and has been engaged in Chinese education for 25 years. From studying music to teaching Chinese, his career was richer than initially envisioned. Although looking back, there are hardships and setbacks, he said that it is indispensable to contribute to the education of overseas Chinese.
Here's his self-description.
The next generation cannot be allowed to lose Chinese
I came to Spain in the winter of 1985. Initially, my aim was to study music, and I was soon introduced by a friend to become a viola player in a symphony orchestra in the southern city of Malaga.
Compared with many overseas Chinese around me, I was lucky that I did not experience a long period of hard work and entrepreneurship, and my work in the symphony orchestra was stable. In 1997, Xia Zhijie, president of the Association of Overseas Chinese in Southern Spain, approached me and asked me to start a Chinese school with another overseas Chinese, Zhou Qi, and we agreed without hesitation.
At that time, there were only a few hundred overseas Chinese in Malaga, most of whom came from Wenzhou, Qingtian and other places in Zhejiang province to do business, and they were usually busy working hard and often could not take care of their children's education. I feel obligated to participate in the establishment of Chinese school and retain the "Chinese roots" for the "second generation of overseas Chinese".
At the beginning of the school, we encountered countless difficulties. From submitting applications to rent classrooms, to raising funds and hiring teachers, we do it ourselves. For the first two or three years, the school had only forty or fifty students. In order to let more overseas Chinese families realize the importance of Chinese education, we went door to door to visit. Some parents reluctantly told us that the work was too busy to send their children to school. Our teachers decided that everyone would "do everything" and drive some students to and from school to solve the worries of parents.
I remember, for about four or five years, every weekend early in the morning, I set off from my home on the outskirts of Malaga more than an hour in advance and drove more than ten kilometers to the city to pick up the four children of two families to go to school. After school, send them home one by one. Although it was a bit hard work, watching the size of the school gradually expand, and the number of students increased from dozens to hundreds, my colleagues and I felt that these efforts were nothing.
Today, our Chinese language school has nearly 600 students and a branch school in a town more than 20 kilometers from the city of Malaga. Through our years of efforts, overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese have paid more attention to the Chinese education of the next generation, and many parents have realized that they cannot let their children lose the language and culture of their ancestral country.
What is even more gratifying is that in recent years, with the significant improvement of China's comprehensive national strength, many Spanish people have also become deeply interested in China and Chinese culture. To this end, we have added a Chinese as a foreign language class to meet the needs of local people who also want to let their children learn Chinese. It can be said that in Malaga, learning Chinese has become a boom.
Thank you to the motherland for sending "timely rain"
Looking back on more than 20 years of experience in running schools, the help from overseas Chinese affairs departments at all levels in China has always given us a steady stream of motivation.
To set up Chinese schools overseas, teachers are the key and difficult problem. In the early days of running the school, our teachers' team was based on overseas Chinese who had been engaged in educational work in China, and then asked them to cultivate other overseas Chinese with enthusiasm for teaching. Everyone groped forward together.
Later, the domestic overseas Chinese affairs department learned about our teaching situation and took the initiative to provide us with various supports. For example, for many years, we have organized famous teacher tour groups to organize teachers with rich experience in domestic teaching to "pass on the scriptures and send treasures" overseas; invite our teachers to return to China to participate in many overseas Chinese teacher training classes, and have the opportunity to communicate with Chinese education peers in different countries; hold online lecture training, so that more teachers can stay at home and "study deeply" in the "cloud"... All kinds of support are like a "timely rain", which makes our teaching quality go to a higher level and the pace of development of the school is getting bigger and bigger. Today, the professional quality of our teachers has improved significantly compared with more than 20 years ago.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, institutions such as the China Chinese Education Foundation have sent a variety of online education resources, which have injected us with strong confidence. The Foundation often provides us with a variety of online lecture resources, which are very useful for the training of our teaching staff. The All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shaanxi and other places have organized a number of "online summer camps" and "online winter camps", so that the "second generation of overseas Chinese" have the opportunity to appreciate China's great rivers, mountains and history and culture online, and have a full harvest holiday.
With the backing of our ancestral (home) country, we teachers have more motivation. Soon after the offline suspension, we opened an online class soon after. Although they are separated from the students by a screen, the teachers' intentions and seriousness have not diminished in the slightest. Outside of the scheduled class hours on weekends, teachers often extend their time to make up lessons for students, and even take time to go online on weekdays from Monday to Friday to answer questions for students who need help. From the initial unfamiliarity with the online teaching platform, to the current proficiency in not only the use of online teaching software, but also often take the initiative to innovate teaching methods, teachers try to make up for the limitations of "air" teaching, so that children's Chinese learning is not delayed by the epidemic.
I often tell teachers that we are like a group of gardeners, working hard overseas, cultivating flowers and continuing the roots of Chinese culture.
Sending blessings for the Beijing Winter Olympics
Recently, teachers and students in our school have been busy sending blessings in various forms for the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics.
Not long ago, organized by the Organizing Committee of the Hispanic Chinese Youth Culture and Art Festival and guided by the Chinese Embassy in Spain, the "Together to the Future" Hispanic Chinese youth to welcome the Winter Olympics and the Winter Paralympic Games Calligraphy and Painting Contest was held, and students from 15 Chinese schools actively participated, and our school was no exception. Some students write calligraphy, some paint, and use the pen in their hands to convey the beautiful voice in their hearts.
There is an award-winning painting that impressed me. An 8-year-old child depicts a multicolored track in brilliant colors, sweating on it by athletes with skates, nearby is the ice pier of the Mascot of the Beijing Winter Olympics holding a five-star red flag, and in the distance is the Beijing Tiananmen Tower. From this painting, we can feel the child's familiarity and love for China.
In fact, the "second generation of overseas Chinese" cares about the Beijing Winter Olympics far beyond our imagination, and their news is even more well-informed than ours. Many children will take the initiative to mention to their teachers in class the specific opening time and location of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and they are proud of it.
Watching the children actively participate in the Winter Olympics, my thoughts could not help but drift to 2008. That year, the Beijing Summer Olympic Games were successfully held, and our overseas Chinese were very excited and felt that this was a particularly exciting thing. In the blink of an eye, Beijing is about to become the world's first "city of the Two Olympics", and China's position on the international stage is becoming more and more important. The attention and participation of our overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese in various undertakings such as Chinese culture and sports have become even higher. More importantly, the "second generation of overseas Chinese" has greatly enhanced their sense of identity with their ancestral (home) country through their studies in Chinese schools and their participation in various activities organized in China.
Now, in the city where I live, not only overseas Chinese, but also many local people talk about China, and even give a thumbs up. In the symphony orchestra where I work, colleagues come from all over the world, and many of them talk to me about China and the Beijing Winter Olympics and appreciate China's rapid development. This makes me feel very proud!
In the future, I will continue to work with my colleagues to do a good job in overseas Chinese education, so that more "second generations of overseas Chinese" and local people can learn Chinese, get closer to China, and fall in love with China. (Yan Yu)