Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Muhammad Mateen Hashmi, a lecturer at the Chinese language department of the Islamabad-based National University of Modern Languages (NUML), said he has seen local residents take an increasing interest in the Chinese language.
This is because of the strengthening of friendship between Pakistan and China, he said, adding that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has prompted more people to learn the Chinese language for getting jobs or working better there.
“People-to-people friendship and knowing each other are deepening every year … and in the near future I foresee more and more Pakistani people learning Chinese,” he said.
Hashmi was a student in Shanghai Normal University in 2012 and got a degree in Chinese language teaching. “I had interest in the Chinese language since I was a kid, rather than the popular language English. Even in my childhood, I knew that I would be learning Chinese when I grew up,” he said.
His study of Chinese started as early as 2008. In 2009, he attended a summer camp in Beijing.
“During the summer camp, I had the first hand interaction with native speakers and saw the beauty of the language, so I ended up making my mind to live with the Chinese language by learning and teaching it for the rest of my life,” Hashmi said.
In the Confucius Institute in NUML, Zhang Daojian, 47, has been working for more than eight years.
The Confucius Institute, which was jointly established by Beijing Language and Culture University in 2005, is the first of its kind in Pakistan.
“Our main work is to conduct Chinese teaching activities and Chinese proficiency tests. We also collaborate with famous Pakistani universities and schools to teach Chinese. We have over 2,000 students per year on average,” said Zhang, vice president of the Confucius Institute, Islamabad.
