UN Chinese Language Day Forum 2025

The UN celebrates Chinese Language Day annually on 20th April each year. This year, it falls on to a Sunday. 

The date for the Chinese day was selected from Guyu (“Rain of Millet”), which is the 6th of 24 solar terms in the traditional East Asian calendars, to pay tribute to Cangjie. Cangjie is a very important figure in ancient China, claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of Chinese characters. Legend has it that he had four eyes and four pupils, and that when he invented the characters, the deities and ghosts cried and the sky rained millet. From then on, Chinese people celebrate the day Guyu in honour of Cangjie. In the Gregorian calendar, it usually begins around April 20.

THE UN

To mark this special occasion, we warmly invite everyone with a passion for promoting the Chinese language and culture worldwide—whether in academic or professional settings, as teachers or learners—to join us for the UN Chinese Language Day Forum 2025.

Our two invited speakers will share their insights and reflections drawn from years of experience in intercultural workplaces, offering valuable perspectives on both academic and professional practices in a global context.

Speakers:

Xian ZHAO (赵忺) is a doctoral candidate and Professional Teaching Fellow in the School of Cultures, Languages, and Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland. With a strong passion for Chinese language education, she brings extensive teaching experience across diverse cultural and academic settings, including China, the United States, Thailand, and New Zealand.

In 2019, she served as a Chinese language lecturer in the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Prior to that, she taught at Confucius Institutes in both Thailand and the U.S., where she was actively involved in language instruction and cross-cultural exchange. Her professional contributions extend beyond the classroom—she has served as an examiner for the selection of Confucius Institute volunteer teachers and for the CTCSOL certificate (Certificate for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages).

Additionally, she has acted as a judge for the Chinese Bridge competition. Currently, her research interests lie at the intersection of individual learner differences, artificial intelligence, and language teaching. She is particularly interested in how emerging technologies can enhance the learning experience and outcomes for second language (L2) learners. Xian has published her work in several top-tier academic journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, System, and Language Teaching Research, among others. She also serves as a peer reviewer for more than 20 academic journals.

Ye CHEN (陈烨) is Founder of Dongyan Future Education Studio. She was a former dispatched Mandarin teacher at the Confucius Institute of Peking University and UCL. In 2023 she was named the Global Digital Gold Medal Lecturer by the Chinese Language Alliance, and in 2024 she received the Chinese Language Alliance Gold Medal for Digital Resource Application Case Study (PBL Teaching Method).

Ye has taught at UCL Academy and Seoul International School and served as a member of the question-setting committee for Korea’s Chinese College Entrance Exam mock tests (2021). She took a Chief Research Editor role in the development of an innovative vocabulary software project under Center for Language Education and Cooperation’s (CLEC, China) resource development initiative. Ye has been invited multiple times to conduct training for overseas volunteer Mandarin teachers of CLEC, as well as Chinese teacher associations in Canada, the UK, and South Korea, training over 3,000 teachers in total. Her research has been presented at international conferences, including the European Association of Chinese Teachers’ Symposium, and she has been invited to deliver lectures on AI-empowered education at the Confucius Institutes of the London School of Economics and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Registration

Date: Sunday 20th April 2025
Time: UK 09:00-10:30  | CN 16:00-17:30  | NZ 20:00-21:30 
Access: QUB MS Teams (link will be given after registration)
Languages: Chinese, with English

Happy UN Chinese Language Day! 联合国中文日快乐!

UN Chinese Language Day Forum

Happy UN Chinese Language Day! 联合国中文日快乐!

The date for the Chinese day was selected from Guyu (“Rain of Millet”), which is the 6th of 24 solar terms in the traditional East Asian calendars, to pay tribute to Cangjie. Cangjie is a very important figure in ancient China, claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of Chinese characters. Legend has it that he had four eyes and four pupils, and that when he invented the characters, the deities and ghosts cried and the sky rained millet. From then on, Chinese people celebrate the day Guyu in honour of Cangjie. In the Gregorian calendar, it usually begins around April 20.

THE UN

To celebrate this year’s UN Chinese Language Day, we are delighted to welcome two speakers, Isabella Souza Mclaughlin (苏蔓伊) at Queen’s and Qinyuan Li (李沁园) from Trinity College Dublin, to our Chinese Culture Forum. They will offer insights into their journeys of learning, teaching, and researching the Chinese language in the island of Ireland.

Speakers:

Isabella Souza Mclaughlin is a bilingual English and Portuguese speaker with a keen interest in language-learning. Graduated with BSc in International Business with Mandarin Chinese, Isabella is currently Global Marketing and Recruitment Co-ordinator in Global Student Recruitment at Queen’s.

Qinyuan Li is a PhD candidate in language education at the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin. She has developed her research interests in multilingualism, language acquisition, and the application of technology in educational contexts. Currently, she is engaged in a research project titled ‘Third or Additional Language Learning Strategies: How Learners in Ireland Learn the Chinese Language’, which is funded by the TCD-China Scholarship Council Award.

  • Date: Friday 19 April 2024
  • Time: 14:00-15:30 (GMT)
  • Channel: QUB MS Teams (link will be shared after registration)

Related reading

Celebrating Chinese Language Day

联合国中文节快乐!(Liánhé Guó Zhōngwén jié kuàilè) Happy UN Chinese Language Day!

The Chinese language is one of the six official languages used in the United Nations and together with Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish, each of them is designated with a date to ‘celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote equal use of all six official languages throughout the Organization’.

Celebrating Chinese Language Day at Queen’s, Image@LiangWang

On Wednesday 13th April, just before the university’s Easter closure, The Language Centre organised a small-scale celebration with students – both Chinese and non-Chinese – at the McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast. This is the first on-campus in-person Chinese event after a two-year-long isolation working from home.

Small but highly interactive with lots of fun, the cohort not only learned about the culture of this special day, but also explored a range of Chinese language resources and platforms in support of intercultural language learning both online and in physical settings.

The third semester language course enrolment remains open until Thursday 21st April. Check Mandarin Chinese course page for more details.

– With Kristoff, Sijie, Guangyan and Jiaqi (from left to right), Image@LiangWang

Call for participation –

  • Event 1 – We would like to hear your interesting stories about experience of using Chinese language in an intercultural context. This can be a Chinese-speaking person helping their international friends or learners of Chinese with the language, in which a misunderstanding or miscommunication took place, or a learner of Chinese encountering various situations when Chinese language was used in a creative but funny way.
  • Event 2Chinese and Irish Traditional Music – The Language of The Sound. We warmly welcome you, especially QUB students, to attend the student-led event at Queen’s on Saturday 28/05. Details and registration information will be published soon.
  • Event 3 – We are inviting volunteers to contribute to the Duanwu Festival (Friday 03/06) celebration in a variety of ways. It can be a culture workshop, performance, demo, talent show, photo or short video of your cultural celebration etc., as long as they are interactive and engaging.
  • Regular eventsChinese Culture Forum 2022. While we will do our best to arrange the sessions on topics or issues of potential interest, we are open to suggestions and proposals from you – whether you are a Queen’s staff member, or a student, or a visiting scholar, or a professional from the outside.

You are all welcome to contact us by filling the Reply box (background, proposed topic, ways of delivery, availability, etc.)

2022 Chinese Language Video Festival launched

‘China Chic’: Chinese Language Video Festival launched to celebrate UN Chinese Language Day

CGTN.COM

The theme this year is “China Chic” – a modern take on traditional Chinese heritage from young people around the world. As China has continued to progress and innovate, unique cultural elements have been adapted to fit the very latest trends, with the younger generation increasingly aware of regional differences.

All non-native Chinese speakers from around the world are invited to submit an original video showcasing the beauty of Chinese traditions and how they are incorporated into the modern world.

Read CGTN for more details.