Launch Ceremony of Chinese Bridge Contest（汉语桥比赛）in Greece

On March 29th, Business Confucius Institute in Athens held the “2015 Chinese Teachers Seminar and Launch Ceremony of Chinese Bridge Contest in Greece”. Nearly 40 more Chinese teachers who are native Chinese or Greeks attended it. Chinese ambassador Mr. Zou Xiaoli and two co-directors Ms Yang Xiuqin and Dr. Dimitris Kardaras were present. Mr. Zou made an excellent talk on the relationship between China and Greek, the current cooperative projects like COSCO business expansion in Piraeus, the importance of Chinese language teaching on promoting the understanding between two peoples. He kindly invites all teachers to be guests in the Chinese Embassy and welcomes direct email contacts from the teachers for any issue concerned. On the accreditation of HSK certificate, Mr. Zou said he will contact with Hanban, China, and the departments concerned in Greece and try to solve the issue the soonest. Ms Yang Xiuqin, the co-director of BCI gives a brief introduction to the Chinese Bridge Contest (汉语桥比赛) procedures and encourage all students to participate in this Contest which is held on 2nd, May, 2015 in BCI. After that, the teachers discussed their own thoughts and experience in Chinese teaching and everybody expressed thanks to Mr. Zou’s wonderful talk and the appreciation to BCI for organizing such a meaningful event.

Business Confucius Institute in Athens-Greece celebrated on the 14th of February 2015 the Chinese New Year at Zafolia Hotel in Athens city. There were more than 200 guests invited, among them the Ambassador of China in Athens, Mr. Zou Xiaoli and the Rector of the University of Business and Economics in Athens Mr. Gatsios, who attended the event as well. BCI's students exceptionally presented various artistic performances like dancing, cross-talking, acting, while Ms Yu impressed us with her unique talent and voice! Many of our students received gifts through the lucky draw procedure and awards were handed to the BCI students who excelled in their classes. All of our students, teachers and guests were delighted and enjoyed a cheerful and lovely evening.  

Last Sunday, 7 December 2014, a sunny and a lucky day, witnessed the glory of the football team of our Business Confucius Institute (BCI): we won the championship of the First Chinese-Greek Football Tournament!

That was the finals of the tournament held on the green of the Renti Football Club, starting at 3 o’clock p.m. between the BCI Team and the Allied Team of the Shipping Companies.

Alexandros Paronis, a BCI player of just 14 years old, with his clever dribbles and instant response to passes from highly determined teammates, shot and achieved the first two magnificent goals. In the first half, the match showed a more or less evident advantage in our favor but, in the second half, despite a third goal achieved by Gai Bochen, one of our Chinese players, the Allied Team managed to shoot two goals in return when the game had about ten minutes to go. But finally, the whistle blew, announcing a final score of 3 to 2. What an exciting game!
In the former group matches, the BCI team had come across powerful opponents and experienced tough and fierce moments, but finally survived in Group A and entered the finals with the Shipping Team from Group B. Our team won the first match on November 23, with a score of 7 to 2 and, on November 30, beat the Red Star Team 2 to 1 in the second fight.

Now holding the silver cup of championship high up, we are happy to name our warriors with their respective achievements as follows:
George Orfanides (B2 Class, 3 scores); Alexandros Paronis (A2 Class, 3 scores), Gai Bochen (BCI secretary, 3 scores), Ioannis Stratigopoulos (A4 Class, 2 scores), Nikolaos Ypsilantis (B1 Class, 1 score). All the other members, i.e., Ioannis Besis (B4 Class), George Konstantinidis (C1 Class), Polymeros Konstantinos (A4 class), and Peter Wu (local Chinese teacher), have also contributed greatly to our final triumph with their fine sportsmanship as well as exquisite skill.

A special mention should be made of Maximos Stampoulidis (E Class), our goal keeper. Many a time have the spectators stood amazed by this young man, sometimes as light as a swallow and sometimes as ferocious as a leopard, who warded off the shooting ball again and again. No wonder why he deserves the name of a superstar!

Let us remember the victory with all these names! Let us wait for more in the future!