EU 'students' get access to Chinese culture (2)

Hammarlund, the team leader, said they were lucky to join the program.

"We have been very grateful to be here. We are the lucky 30."

During a Chinese language class, the sentence "wo shi ou meng de zhi yuan", which means "I'm an employee of the EU", was practiced again and again.

Teacher Wang Zulei said the EU employees in her class may have learned some "general" Chinese before they came. So she said she taught them something "special" in her class.

As a Chinese teacher of the university, Wang selected topics and content related to the employees' activities in China and their experience in the EU.

To Wang's surprise, most of the EU employees in her class could not only master the sentence quickly but also talk about their life and work with each other in simple Chinese.

She said it's pleasant to be with these EU employees. "They are thoughtful people with different perspectives, and it's more like a cultural exchange between me and them, rather than a class.

"I don't think I am a teacher of them. Instead, I'm just a Chinese person who is better at Chinese than them," she said.

The EU employees were divided into four classes according to their different levels. As the teacher of Class Four, a senior level class in which the EU employees have studied Chinese for at least one year, Wang focuses on conversations related to their daily activities in China and their work experience in the EU.

Cultot, an employee with the communications networks, content and technology department of the EU, said the class was "great".

Cultot has been studying Chinese for two years.

"I'm studying Chinese now and I wish I could continue for another course, because it is good for my career," he said.

Apart from taking Chinese language courses and lectures, the EU employees will also be visiting a series of scenic spots both in Beijing, as well as Xi'an.

As part of the program, they also visited China Daily on Tuesday to learn from the newspaper's editors about how Chinese media operate in the country.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership, and the program.

This is a follow-up to the China-EU People to People High-level Dialogue, a milestone in the China-EU relationship, said Zhang Xiuqin, an official at the Ministry of Education.

"Through this program, we hope EU officials will learn more about China, about Chinese history, about the society, about the people, and at the same time, we can learn from the EU," she said.

Han Zhen, president of Beijing Foreign Studies University, said education has played a very important part in the cooperation between China and the EU.

"I think this training program is one of the vivid examples of our cooperation in education," he said.

Adinda Sinnaeve, an employee of the Directorate General for Competition of the EU, said many problems, such as pollution, climate change and the financial crisis, have become common concerns of different countries across the world.

"We can solve the problems only by cooperating with each other," she said. "I hope to exchange my perspectives on these issues with Chinese people in the program."

Jiang Mengyun contributed to this story.

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