Heartfelt Connection

Egyptian student’s teaching experience in a Chinese village fuels her passion for Chinese language

- Li Xiaoyu

Passant Sayed (center) at the award ceremony of the 18th Chinese Bridge contest held in Changsha, Hunan Province in central China, on August 22, 2019

In the first ChinAfrica short video competition, which took place at the end of 2019, Passant Sayed, a 23-year-old Egyptian student, proved a unanimous hit with the judges and went on to claim the top prize. Sayed’s video focused on her 10-day teaching experience in a rural school in China. If you’re wondering how a foreigner was able to accomplish such a mission in a completely Chinese language environment, communicating was the least of her worries. Sayed speaks fluent Chinese and went on to win the 18th “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition held in Hunan Province last year.

The short teaching experience in rural China made a big impact on her life, which has led to her teaching aspirations having a more long-term outlook.

Selected as a volunteer

Following her father’s advice, Sayed chose Chinese as a major at Cairo University, a language that Egyptians found difficult to master, but which would help her find employment. During her third year of study, the university’s Confucius Institute offered her a scholarship as reward for her performance in the HSK level III Chinese proficiency test. This took her to Shandong University in China’s eastern coastal province of Shandong, where she studied Chinese for a year.