Interesting Ways of Learning Chinese Characters: Cultural Experience Activities of the 16th Ambassador Class

On June 2nd, 78 students of the 16th “Ambassador Class” from 19 foreign embassies in China gathered at the Confucius Institute Headquarters to “acquaint themselves with Chinese characters”. The activities were designed to let them explore the beauty of sinology and Chinese characters, recognize the vitality of Chinese characters and feel their unique charm.

Temporary tattoos in Chinese characters

We learn Chinese characters this way. We design different fonts in an artistic form to make them vivid. The creative, fashionable and interesting phrases are pasted on the skin and paper, such as “放大招” (a big move) and “防火防盗防加班” (prevent fire, theft and overtime work).

Pillows with Chinese characters

Come on, let’s PK and see who can use the pillows to combine words and sentences, and compose six complete ancient poems.

Chinese character mural

Eight hundred movable type blocks made of wood can not only help us to learn more Chinese characters, but also combine different phrases. For example, “晚上” (at night), “汉字” (Chinese characters), “生日快乐” (happy birthday), “吃货孙”(foodie) and so on. Which Chinese characters did you find?

Copying with Chinese writing brushes

Chinese writing brush is a treasure of the Chinese nation for world art. As a traditional writing tool of China, it has made outstanding contributions to the shaping of Chinese culture. Through tracing in black ink over characters printed in red, we have come to know the Double-nine Diagram (a diagram with nine nine-stroke characters). We wrote very well, a horizontal stroke and a vertical stroke, a left-falling stroke and a right-falling stroke, and a dot and a turning stroke.

Small-sized movable type printing press

Printing, as one of the Four Great Inventions in ancient China, had a great influence on the progress of world civilization and the development of human culture. We have printed “知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也” (To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.) through the small-sized movable type printing press, along with the moveable lead-type printing and moveable wood-type plate.

Writing games

We use scientific and technological approaches to deconstruct the strokes of Chinese characters, learn Chinese characters by using touch screen and playing games, and combine compound characters with single-character, immersing ourselves in the charm of Chinese characters.

In addition, there is Chinese character venation display board displaying the history of Chinese character development and font evolution. We learn the earliest pictographic characters in China, the origin of Chinese characters, by depicting the template of inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells. More Chinese character experience activities are waiting for you, and we'll see you next time!