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!

With a view to better exchanging with Chinese associations and Companies operating in Greece, Business Confucius Institute (BCI) has formed its Football Team in November, 2014. Totally there are 10 members including 8 Greek students and 2 Chinese.

The 8 members are Stampoulidis Maximos from E Class (our Goal Keeper), George Orfanides from B2, Ioannis Stratigopoulos from A4, Paronis Alexandros from A2, Ioannis Besis from B4, Konstantinidis George from C1, Polymeros Konstantinos from A4 and Nikolaos Ypsilantis from B1.
The two Chinese players are Peter Wu, the Chinese teacher, and Gai Bochen (Assistant in BCI office).

The first beautiful match took place on Nov. 23, and BCI Team beat Huawei Team at the scores of 7 :2.
We’ll have the match on Nov. 30 against China’s Red Star Team at 4 pm at Renti Club (Fun Park).
All friends are welcome to join us there!

On November 22nd, BCI held a culture lecture of Introduction to Chinese Tea, Art and Ceremony. Ms Yang, the director of BCI, made an excellent introduction about Chinese tea, including the origin of Chinese tea, different types of tea, tea Art which is composed of evaluation on tea leaves, processing and tasting of tea, the relationship between tea ceremony and tea culture. After the introduction, Ms Party (Chinese name is百迪), one of the audiences, volunteered to perform the Tea Ceremony and serve everyone a cup of delicious Chinese green tea. The audiences are very impressed by the rich variety of Chinese Tea, and particular the spirit and philosophy behind the ceremonies. In the end, Ms Yang gave all participants a small bag of famous Chinese black tea for them to taste back home.