Category: announcements

Key Information:

Course: Five Week Chinese Brush Painting Class
Animals – Panda, Tiger, Crane and more

Date & Time: Thursdays from 30 September – 28 October, 10:00-11:30am

Online teaching time: 7.5 hour

Homework: There will be additional homework after each session and the tutor will also provide technical support to students who have relevant queries.

Student level: This course is suitable for both beginners and advanced students.

Class size: A minimum of five students are required to ensure the class goes ahead.

Location: This class will be delivered digitally using the online platform Zoom.

Why should I take this course?

By controlling the special soft brush with a sharp point, Chinese brush painting is not only a mental exercise, also a physical exercise that coordinates the mind and the body. Join this course to learn brush handling techniques and paint some interesting subjects, including Panda, tiger, crane and more.

What does it cover?

Explore the most common Chinese soft brush and ink techniques.
Live demonstration will be provided during the class.

About the teacher:

This course will be led by Chi Zhang – an experienced instructor, shortlisted for ‘Sky Art Landscape Artist of the year 2015’, whose work has been projected across Edinburgh castle during the 2015 Military Tattoo. For more information and to see Chi’s work please visit http://www.chizhangartist.com.

How much does it cost?

£85 (£75/concessions), concession is offered only to full time students and UoE staff.

Please also allow up to £35 if you don’t have your own art materials. The tutor will provide guidance on purchasing the materials after registration.

Booking & Further information:

To optimise the learning experience a maximum capacity has been set per group – so space is very limited! To secure one of the limited spaces on this course, please use the University’s ePay system.

Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, our administrative team is working from home. Please contact us by email info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk.

One to one tutorials and small group workshops can also be arranged. Please email info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk for more info.

Translation

Our client portfolio varies widely as does the range of translations we have undertaken both for Chinese to English & English to Chinese. From Edinburgh International Festival to local councils, SMEs to corporates, our translation work is carried out by contemporary Chinese translators who also have excellent English. Our standards are high, our prices are reasonable and should a client require specialist translation we can call upon expertise via the extensive resources available through the University.

Translation is charged at an hourly rate and proofing of artwork will also be provided.

Interpretation

The Confucius Institute for Scotland offers consecutive interpretation services covering a wide range of topics, including social services, business and cultural events. Our experienced interpreters are professional and reliable, and help ensure a culturally sensitive context.

If simultaneous interpretation is required we can help you find the right solution for your conference or meeting based on our experience of organising such.

Certified Translation Service

We also offer a cost effective certified translation service for students. To obtain a price please send through the document for translation or a sample page.  Estimates are usually provided within 48 hours. Translation work is usually delivered within 5 working days of quote acceptance. An express service is offered, subject to staff availability.

Across The Sectors

While our popular language classes are ideal for those who can commit to a regular learning programme, we also offer private classes in the workplace, at the Institute or online, tailored to meet individual learners’ specific needs.

The Institute has provided language classes and cultural briefings for clients in various business sectors, including financial, retail, tourism and the arts, as well as several local and Scottish government clients.

Private classes are also available to time-pressed university students, business clients or whole families moving abroad. In addition, our teachers can deliver intensive one-to-one or small-group language courses in the workplace, at the Institute or online. We also offer support classes to school students by special arrangement.

Tailored private or small group classes are available throughout the year. To find out more about the options, please contact xin.zhang@ed.ac.uk.

Our friends at the Confucius Institute of the University of Aberdeen are hosting a wonderful programme of online lectures and workshops, from the 7th of June to the 3rd of July, focusing on Chinese literary translation. 

With such an exciting programme on offer, we are offering full funding for two aspiring translators to participate completely free of charge.

Run in conjunction with Paper Republic, this festival covers a wide range of topics led by a host of established translators. Lectures are free (with registration via Eventbrite) and there are limited spaces available on a range of interactive workshops.

Workshops are £30 each (£20 for students), with a discount available for those who sign up for all six (£150/£99).

The Confucius Institute for Scotland are delighted to be able to offer full funding to assist budding translators to participate. If you are a full-time student, enrolled at any university in Scotland, you can apply!

To see the whole schedule of events and to apply for a fully funded space, head to their event’s page HERE.

The deadline for applications is 26 May.

EdIntelligence, the University AI and Data Science Society, is hosting a talk by Paul Mozur, New York Times Asia Tech Correspondent and Pulitzer Prize finalist, called The Rise of AI in China.

Date and Time: Thursday, 25 March, 2021, 3pm

Location: Online via Zoom

Follow the group’s Facebook event for more details.

Paul Mozur is a technology correspondent focused on the intersection of technology and geopolitics in Asia. He has been twice named a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He has covered China’s innovation boom, the global spread of disinformation on Facebook, the rise of new surveillance technologies and the emerging tech competition between China and the United States.

Paul will provide an insight to the tech environment in China, a region unlike anywhere else in the world and one which has seen greater scrutiny in recent times. The talk will centre around China’s ambitions for their implementation of artificial intelligence and how such progress has been impacted by massive state spending in surveillance. Additionally, in considering the overall landscape, Paul will discuss areas where developments have gone well and where things look rather dystopian.

You are warmly invited to the next Asian Studies seminar. Prof Sarah Dauncey will give a talk on her new book Disability in Contemporary China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2020), with a dialogue with Prof. Hangping Xu. 

Date and Time: Wednesday 3 March, 4-6 pm (UK time). 

Location: Online via Zoom

Zoom link for registration:

https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkcOuorz8vE9VmUjHoWm92hvDr2N5AP1zt

Abstract: 

In Disability in Contemporary China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture, Sarah Dauncey offers the first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese society and culture from 1949 to the present. Through the analysis of a wide variety of Chinese sources, from film and documentary to literature and life writing, media and state documents, she sheds important new light on the ways in which disability and disabled identities have been represented and negotiated over this time. She exposes the standards against which disabled people have been held as the Chinese state has grappled with expectations of what makes the ‘ideal’ Chinese citizen. From this, she proposes an exciting new theoretical framework for understanding disabled citizenship in different societies – ‘para-citizenship’. A far more dynamic relationship of identity and belonging than previously imagined, her new reading synthesises the often troubling contradictions of citizenship for disabled people – the perils of bodily and mental difference and the potential for personal and group empowerment.

Speakers bio: 

Sarah Dauncey is Professor of Chinese Society and Disability at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on disability in China, in particular the way in which the changing Chinese socio-political environment has transformed the cultural encoding of disability from the end of the Cultural Revolution. Her work has been supported by the British Academy, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Universities China Committee in London, the White Rose East Asia Centre and other organisations. She is co-editor of Writing Lives in China, 1600-2010: Histories of the Elusive Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), as well as various book chapters and articles in key Area Studies and Disability Studies journals. Her book Disability in Contemporary China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. 

Hangping Xu is Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in modern and contemporary Chinese literary, cultural, and visual studies, comparative literature, and Taiwan Studies. His interdisciplinary research engages two significant turns in literary and cultural studies—namely, the affective and the ethical —by foregrounding disability as a mode of critique. He is currently completing his first book project entitled Broken Bodies as Agents: Disability Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Chinese Culture and Literature. Probing the narrative and symbolic centrality of disability in the Chinese political-moral imagination of the long twentieth century, it develops a critical genealogy of “Chinese crip figures” in transnational contexts. His publications have appeared in such venues as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC), Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, and A Global History of Literature and the Environment (Cambridge University Press). 

Determination, resilience and faith are embodied in the zodiac animal for the coming year. As the Year of the Ox approaches, we hope the new year will inspire us all to tackle the challenges that still remain head on. 

Join the Confucius Institute for Scotland and the team virtually for a range of activities to mark the arrival of the Year of the Ox which starts on 12 February 2021. Don’t miss your Chinese New Year essentials, including how to prepare for the Chinese New Year, how to write 福 (fú, luck),  say Chinese New Year greetings or wrap the traditional delicacy 饺子 (jiaǒzi, dumplings). Although we cannot gather together to celebrate the New Year together, we hope to bring you a flavour of the celebration online.

THE CHINA-SCOTLAND BUSINESS AWARDS AND CHINESE BURNS SUPPER 2021

15.30-17.00, 4 February 2021 on Zoom

The Confucius Institute for Scotland is working with the China Britain Business Council Scotland once again this year on the unique Chinese Burns Supper event where we celebrate the two cultures and heritages together. This online event is free and you can register for it .  

NEW TUNES FOR THE NEW YEAR

Launch on the Chinese New Year’s Day, 12 February 2021

Celebrating the arrival of the Year of the Ox and exploring the ties between China and Scotland, the Institute’s music curator Kimho Ip, together with Filip Davidse, combined the sounds of the traditional Chinese yangqin and saxophone to create inter-cultural dialogues that reflect the subtle nuances between the cultures. The two new pieces, Winter Is It Past and Delivering Grain, by the Filipkimho Duo were commissioned by the Institute for the Chinese New Year 2021. 

VIRTURAL EVENT: A GLIMPSE INTO CHINESE NEW YEAR

13.00-14.00, Tuesday, 16 February or 17.00-18.00, Friday, 19 February on Zoom 

Join this fun-filled quiz and game session to learn more about the Chinese New year. Combining language and culture activities, this session celebrates the traditional Chinese New Year and covers all the basics about the Chinese New Year. 

The event is free and family friendly, but booking essential. Please reserve your place at Eventbrite.

The Confucius Institute for Scotland wishing you a healthy, peaceful and fulling new year 2021! 

Key Information:

Course: Five week Chinese Calligraphy (Daytime)

Date & Time: Wednesdays from 3 March – 31 March, 10:00-11:30am

Online teaching time: 7.5 hour

Homework: There will be additional homework after each session and the tutor will also provide individual email feedback, including technical support to deal with relevant queries.

Student level: This course is suitable for both beginners and advanced students.

Class size: A minimum of five students are required to ensure the class goes ahead.

Location: This class will be delivered digitally using the online platform Zoom.

Why should I take this course?

Clerical scripts (隶书, lìshū) is a traditional artistic writing format dated back 2000 years ago and still widely used in signage and headings nowadays. This writing style is easier to learn and suitable for beginners.

What does it cover?

• Introduce common Chinese soft brush and ink techniques
• Guide students through the fundamental strokes of Seal and Clerical style scripts
• Students can anticipate completing at least one piece of Chinese calligraphy artwork per class. The content of this work could be a selected Chinese poems or perhaps an ancient master’s quotation.
• Live demonstration will be provided during the class.

About the teacher:

This course will be led by Chi Zhang – an experienced instructor, shortlisted for ‘Sky Art Landscape Artist of the year 2015’, whose work has been projected across Edinburgh castle during the 2015 Military Tattoo. For more information and to see Chi’s work please visit http://www.chizhangartist.com.

How much does it cost?

£85 (£75/concessions), concession is offered only to full time students and UoE staff.

Please also allow up to £25 for materials if you don’t have your own art materials. The tutor will provide guidance on purchasing the materials after registration.

Booking & Further information:

To secure one of the limited spaces on this course, please use the University ePay system .

Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, our administrative team is working from home. Please contact us by email info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk.

One to one tutorials and small group workshops can also be arranged. Please email info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk for more info.

Booking Deadline:

Please note bookings will close 7 days before the term start date.

Key Information:

Course: Five week Chinese Brush Painting – Birds and Flowers (Daytime)

Date & Time: Tuesdays from 2 March – 30 March, 10:00-11:30am

Online teaching time: 7.5 hour

Homework: There will be additional homework after each session and the tutor will also provide individual email feedback, including technical support to deal with relevant queries.

Student level: This course is suitable for both beginners and advanced students.

Class size: A minimum of five students are required to ensure the class goes ahead.

Location: This class will be delivered digitally using the online platform Zoom.

Why should I take this course?

Birds and flowers painting were often used as decorative elements in pottery, appeared in screens and utensils. From Tang dynasty around the 8th and 9th centuries in China until today, Birds and flowers painting is a special school of Chinese brush paintings and it is widely popular for centuries.

What does it cover?

• Explore the most common Chinese soft brush and ink techniques
• Participants will have the option to select from a range of subjects demonstrated by the tutor, such as crane, oriole, kingfisher, lotus flower, Chinese orchid etc.
• Live demonstration will be provided during the class.

About the teacher:

This course will be led by Chi Zhang – an experienced instructor, shortlisted for ‘Sky Art Landscape Artist of the year 2015’, whose work has been projected across Edinburgh castle during the 2015 Military Tattoo. For more information and to see Chi’s work please visit http://www.chizhangartist.com.

How much does it cost?

£85 (£75/concessions), concession is offered only to full time students and UoE staff.

Please also allow up to £35 if you don’t have your own art materials. The tutor will provide guidance on purchasing the materials after registration.

Booking & Further information:

To optimise the learning experience a maximum capacity has been set per group – so space is very limited! To secure one of the limited spaces on this course, please use the University’s ePay system.

Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, our administrative team is working from home. Please contact us by email info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk.

One to one tutorials and small group workshops can also be arranged. Please email info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk for more info.

Booking Deadline:

Please note bookings will close 7 days before the term start date.