The first award of the Confucius Institute

One of the main activities of the Confucius Institute recently opened at our university is the popularization and dissemination of Chinese culture. In this direction, we have already gained some experience: as many know, Chinese Culture Days were held on the basis of the Chinese Studies Cabinet (former Confucius Cabinet RICC BSU), within which workshops on Chinese calligraphy, cooking, traditional gymnastics and Tai Chi Chuan were organized. And a little more than a year ago we had a fairly representative international scientific conference "The traditional spiritual culture of Eastern Slavic and Chinese peoples."

Therefore, when we received information about the competition organized by the Republican Institute of Sinology named after Confucius - the festival of short films “China in Belarus”, we had no doubt whether to participate or not to participate. At the initiative of the Director of the Confucius Institute at the GGU them. F. Skorina from the Chinese side of Mr. Wang Lei, it was decided by the forces of our Chinese students to demonstrate (as a video) the Chinese tea ceremony. Mr. Wang Lei worried that during the ceremony not only external attributes were observed - a special set of necessary dishes, Chinese dresses for girls and costumes for young men, but also that all the main stages of this ancient graceful and fascinating ceremony were demonstrated.

Wang Gaoqun, a teacher of Chinese, helped us with her consultations. Senior Lecturer of the Department of Russian, General and Slavic Linguistics I.V. Serikova carefully thought out the external (including musical) design of the ceremony, and the main roles in the tea ceremony were performed by 2 nd year students of the Faculty of Philology Angelina Aksenchikova and Violetta Beloded. The girls have already mastered the elementary course of the Chinese language and have improved their skills in the summer courses in the Chinese cities of Dalian and Shanghai. Philology students Nikita Malashkov and Anton Kovalev assisted Angelina and Violetta. The roles between the main participants of the tea ceremony were distributed as follows: Angelina, adhering to the basic rules of this etiquette, performed all the actions that accompanied the tea ceremony, and Violetta commented in Chinese on its main stages. After several rehearsals, the Chinese tea ceremony "in the Gomel version" was shown at the end of February in the TV show "Good evening, Gomel!" During an event dedicated to the traditional Chinese New Year holiday.

The video was filmed, of course, in the study of Chinese studies, against the background of the portrait of the great sage Confucius. Camera work and technical design of the video film (including the imposition of titles on the video in Russian) was carried out by the graduate of the Faculty of Philology Anastasia Lashkevich, the head of the youth initiatives department.

With understandable impatience and excitement, all the project participants were waiting for the decision of an authoritative jury, and when on the eve of March 15 - the day of summing up the competition - our team was invited to Minsk to award and present a diploma, we realized that it was not for nothing that we tried. The short video "Chinese Tea Ceremony", prepared as part of the activities of the Confucius Institute at the GGU them. F. Skaryna, was named one of the best and was awarded a diploma in the nomination "For the popularization of the traditions of Chinese culture." Diploma signed by Director of the Republican Institute of Sinology named after Confucius of the BSU Professor A.A. Tozik and Dean of the Philological Faculty of the BSU, Professor I.S. Rovdo, our team, represented by Art. teacher I.V. Serikova, students V. Beloded and A. Aksenchikova, were presented by Ms. Sun Yanwei, Deputy Director of the Republican Institute of Sinology named after Confucius of BSU.

Congratulations to all the members of the Confucius Institute team on their first success!

Vladimir Koval, head. pulpit

Russian, general and Slavic linguistics

Video “Chinese Tea Ceremony” can be seen here.