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你好 Nǐ hăo,
Ni hao, Kia Ora, and welcome to this June newsletter! Preparations are in full swing for this year’s New Zealand Chinese Language Week, and we look forward to sharing your activities and events as they happen around the country.
This year is the 10th year New Zealand Chinese Language Week has been held. It’s a special milestone, and the NZCLW team have a few exciting things underway. We look forward to sharing them with you in the months to come.
In case you’ve forgotten some of last year’s great activities, or you’d like to re-live some of them, check out our 2023 Wrap-up Video below and enjoy it all over again – while getting ready for this year!
New Zealand Chinese Language Week is all about encouraging New Zealanders to “give Chinese a go” by learning some key phrases and sharing them with others during the week.
Playing an important part in this are Chinese Language Superstars, New Zealanders who want to share their language learning journey with others.
We’ve had some great Language Superstars over the past 10 years – ranging from winemakers to farmers, business owners and entrepreneurs. All have contributed great stories – ranging from fluent speakers to those at an early stage of their journey.
If you’d like to share your Chinese language learning journey as part of NZCLW 2024, please get in touch!
New Zealand Chinese Language Week was proud to support the Centres of Asia-Pacific Excellence's global citizenship education forum ‘Learning Languages, the heart of Global Citizenship’ last Tuesday at Victoria University of Wellington.
Sitting within Aotearoa Spanish Language Week, this event was dedicated to the essential worth of learning all languages in modern global citizenship.
One of NZCLW’s Chinese Language Superstars from last year, Oliver Ibbetson, took part in the panel discussion, talking about the value of Chinese language learning in his life.
Social and cultural links between people in different nations such as those in sister city arrangements are an important link between nations, former Foreign Minister Sir Don McKinnon told the recent Global Cities New Zealand conference in Marlborough.
China and New Zealand have many sister-city links, and some are strong, active relationships. For example, Dunedin and Shanghai have a sister-city relationship with a multimillion dollar medical research link.
Sir Don encouraged sister city representatives at the conference to take up the opportunity to visit their overseas sister cities, as these personal connections were important to maintaining and strengthening the relationships.
Ensuring good communications through shared language skills is an important part of those relationships, and bridging that cultural gap is part of why NZCLW Trust was formed 10 years ago.
Time is flying and it will be September before we know it, so it’s a good time now to start thinking how you would like to take part in New Zealand Chinese Language Week this year.
We still welcome potential sponsors – please get in touch with the project team at nzclw@nzclw.com to talk about this opportunity.
Please also email the project team about any events and activities you are working on – we’d love to hear about them! We also invite members of the community to register their events at the link below, so we can share them with supporters through our social media and other channels.
We are always keen to let people know about great language and cultural events happening around the country. One recent event was held by the Marlborough branch of the New Zealand Chinese Association, where the renowned Amber Quartet played a mix of classical Western and Chinese music to an enthusiastic audience in Blenheim. This NZCA branch hosts a great NZCLW event each year.
Thank you to everyone who has signed up as a sponsor so far!
Xie Xie!
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