To celebrate the upcoming Pakistan Day, the Confucius Institute at University of Karachi (CIUK) held the seventh “Pakistan Day” Chinese Speech Contest on Saturday. Contestants were divided into junior group and senior group, and a total of 54 Pakistani students from Confucius Institute and teaching sites have participated. After the preliminary selection, 20 contestants entered the final.
At the scene, students from CIUK presented the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic volunteer-themed song “Love Is Here”. The youthful and passionate chorus instantly led to a warm atmosphere in the stadium. Students from CIUK performed folk dances from various provinces of Pakistan. Teachers and students jointly sang the song “You Have Stolen My Heart”, expressing their praise and blessing for Pak-China friendship. Laiba Faisal and Midhat Arif won the crown of junior and senior groups respectively.
According to Mr Zhang Xiaoping, Chinese director of CIUK, the “Pakistan Day” Chinese Speech Contest is a traditional event of CIUK. It has been successfully held for seven sessions since 2016 and has become an important platform for students to express their patriotic enthusiasm, eulogize Pak-China friendship, demonstrate their Chinese language proficiency, and promote people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and Pakistan.
On the occasion, Mr Muhammad Nasiruddin Khan, Pakistani director of CIUK highlighted that with joint efforts of Sichuan Normal University and University of Karachi, CIUK has developed into the largest Confucius Institute in Pakistan. It has launched the first 2+2 joint training program for undergraduates majoring in Chinese in Pakistan, and students majoring in Business Chinese will be recruited soon after graduation. He believes that the cooperation between the two universities will get closer and closer.
