This year’s Confucius Institute summer camp, was held from July 11 to 22 in the cities of Beijing and Qufu. This annual event is jointly organized by Hanban, Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Confucius Institute at the University of Vienna and the Confucius Research Institute of the People’s Republic of China and gives high school students ages 14 to 19 the opportunity to spend a summer in China and to discover the country’s age-old language and culture.

This year’s “Chinese bridge” (汉语桥), as the Confucius Institute’s summer camp is also known, offered participants a vast selection of activities ranging from calligraphy and paper-cut courses, to performances of Beijing opera and concerts of traditional Chinese music. Much to the delight of the students, trips to Beijing’s most famous sights such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City were also included in the programme.

After a few enjoyable days in the capital, the trip went on to Qufu in Shandong Province, the birthplace of Confucius. Qufu is famous for its many sights associated with the sage, such as the San Kong (三孔), the Confucius Temple, the Kong family’s mansion, and the Confucius cemetery, which offer a unique view into life in ancient China. As if this wasn’t enough, the Taishan (泰山), one of China’s five sacred mountains and the Nishan (尼山), the mountain on which Confucius was allegedly born, are located in Qufu’s surroundings.

To complete the Confucian experience, students participated in a traditional Chinese apprentice ceremony in the auditorium of the Confucius Research Institute. Next, the now true Confucian apprentices attended an impressive show in which the sage’s life was artistically and acrobatically reinterpreted. Qufu’s Confucius Research Institute additionally offered participants several activities such as lectures on Chinese history and culture, calligraphy and seal making courses in which students had the opportunity of not only to learn how to write their names in Chinese, but also to carve them into traditional Chinese stone seals. In accordance with the ancient Chinese notion of the importance of not only mental, but also physical cultivation, courses in the martial art of Taijiquan (太极拳), as well as a traditional tea ceremony were offered to participants. With a reinvigorated body and mind, students, on the 21st of July, took the Confucius Institute’s Chinese Proficiency Test and so demonstrated their newly acquired language skills.

The Confucius Institute summer camp is the result of intensive cooperation between the Confucius Institute at the University of Vienna and the Confucius Research Institute of the People’s Republic of China, the basis of which was laid last September when the two Institutes signed an agreement of partnership and cooperation, thereby establishing a true“Chinese bridge”.