Student organizations and local Chinese culture groups came together to celebrate the Chinese New Year at the Progress Energy Center Sunday.
Hoping to promote cultural understanding between North Carolina and China for educational and business purposes, representatives from the Carolina China Council and the Confucius Institute of N.C. State University said they have much to celebrate from 2012 and to look forward to in 2013.
State senator Harris Blake attended the celebration and represented the Carolina China Council, a nonprofit organization that aims to build bridges between North Carolina and China.
“China is not our enemy. They are our competitor,” Blake said. “If we do it right, 30 years from now, when the younger generation is in its 50s, China and the U.S. ought to be absolute friends on a competitive basis.”
Jianning Ding, deputy director of the Confucius Institute, has helped the Institute by teaching Chinese in several of the Institute’s Chinese language classes and by overseeing the creation of many new cultural programs offered to N.C. State students as well as the general public.
“We have about 1,000 students all together,” Ding said. “Including all of the people who attend activities, we have more than 20,000 people. I can hardly believe it. And we’ve had such positive feedback from the community and students.”
Ding said the Institute also actively supports the community by partnering with organizations such as the Triangle Area Chinese American Society and by visiting schools at other campuses including the North Carolina School of Science and Math, Northwood Elementary and High Point University.
Last year saw an expansion of programs targeted toward businesses with offices in the Triangle area. One class on conducting business in China enrolled about 20 Lenovo employees in 2012.
However, Ding said she hopes the Institute can affect the UNC education system as a whole and not just impact the students enrolled in the Institute’s programs.
“The institute is such a valuable asset for us because they are helping us spread knowledge of the Chinese language around the public schools in North Carolina and our universities,” Tom Ross, UNC System president, said. “That’s going to be critical because in order for us to be good partners, they need to understand us and we need to understand them.”
Adam Hartzell, executive director for the Center for International Understanding, came to the Chinese New Year event and works to connect North Carolinians with places around the world.
“I think more and more, North Carolina and China are connected economically, so the more we can understand each other through our universities and through our relationships back and forth, the more both of us will be able to prosper in the future,” Hartzell said.
However, many in attendance said that as important as it is for professionals to understand the importance of cultural understanding, it is also important that students understand it as well.
“We have great interest in building connections with China and elsewhere in Asia,” Daniel Solomon, dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, said. “I was just in Korea two weeks ago. I’ve been to China twice and it’s a very interesting country. We’ve got partnerships there that we’re developing at institutes like N.C. State. I think we need to do a better job of getting N.C. State students abroad and getting students from across the world to interact with our own students.”
