Society
Building cultural bridges through language
By Zhang Jing (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-06-18 19:55
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For this year's Spanish Language Day on June 18th, Instituto Cevantes in Beijing has a special guest, Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Laureate for literature.
Related video: Nobel laureate meets Beijing fans
Mario Vargas Llosa, not only writes the foreword for a collection of short stories by students from Instituto Cevantes in such cities as Beijing, Brussels and Moscow, but also awards the best story writer the prize of a free trip to Spain.
 A child draws at Instituto Cevantes, Beijing. [Photo by Zhang Jing/China Daily] |
When asked about his secrets of writing, Llosa said, "To experience love rather than describe love with words."
The Special Language Day is celebrated among 70 Instituto Cevantes around the globe on the same day. Some 450 million people in 20 countries speak Spanish.
On the fore-ground of Instituto Cevantes Beijing, Chinese and Spanish kids make joint efforts to put up towers of cubics with letters to make out a Spanish word. Teenagers play against each other on table football. Laughters and shouts of excitement have turned the tiny square into a carnivore.
Lu Xuliang, a graduate student with the Central Academy of Fine Arts, has been invited with his classmates to draw Don Quijote for guests on the spot.
"Guests can take our drawings home for free and they are very popular,"said Lu. "Even though I cannot speak Spanish, I enjoy being part of the language day. "
"My friends and I came here to compete in the Spanish karaoke and we will dance salsa," said Huang Rong, a student majored in Spanish.
Set up in 2006, Instituto Cevantes Beijing is so far the largest of its kind in the world in terms of space, the number of students for last term registered 4,500, and the recruitment growth rate has been 50 percent for the past three years, according to Enrique Maldonado, media officer with Cervantes.
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