Nancy Hope, director of the Confucius Institute and executive director of the Kansas Consortium for Teaching about Asia, says she is a cheerleader for Americans getting to know more about East Asia.
“The economy makes it imperative that we know all we can about China,” she told Central Rotarians on January 14. “The U.S. and China are the two big powers on the planet right now and China is not our friend.”
In preparing for the future, the Confucius Institute’s mission is to teach Chinese culture and language to pre and post college age people. It provides language and culture classes for businesses, offering onsite classes, free lectures and other presentations designed to help businesses work with their Chinese counterparts.
“The language is very difficult,” she said. “You need to know at least 30,000 characters to be able to read it. And the customs are so different from ours.” As an example, she said, it would be wrong to offer a green hat to a Chinese man, because it would imply that his wife is unfaithful. “So we tell Kansas business people to leave the green John Deere ball caps at home!”
KU founded the Center for East Asian Studies in 1959 and was one of the first universities to offer Chinese language classes. It cooperates with Chinese universities, exchanges scholars and performers and hosts language events.
China has a market economy, she said. It used to be the west fueled China’s growth, but that is not the case now and Americans need to know more about it.
Hope said 1100 students in Kansas are now studying Chinese and she is working on funding for a summer program and summer language camps for students.
