BEIJING: Sarah Mazhar, a Pakistani Ph.D. student from Beijing University of Technology (BJUT), who has formally learned Mandarin since September 2019, bagged the first prize in an essay competition for international students in Beijing.
Beijing People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (BPAFFC) and related organisations jointly organized the 2020 ‘Beijing and I’ Theme Essay Competition for foreign students.
Sarah was serving as a lecturer in the faculty of engineering and computer Science at National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad before leaving for China. “I recommend all Pakistani people to learn Chinese,” Sarah said.
“In fact, Chinese has started to be taught in many schools in Pakistan. We love China as our brother, so we want to communicate with Chinese people and get to know the country more,” she added.
Sarah believed that Chinese is quite different from Urdu. “Chinese, a symbolic and tonal language as the meaning of a word changes according to its tone, is difficult to learn by heart ‘at first’. But once you get to know how to study the language, it becomes easy,” she commented.
“Through learning Chinese we will be able to better understand all the peculiarities and prospects of CPEC. Moreover, if Pakistanis learn Chinese from childhood just like learning English, bilateral relations will come very close,” she remarked.
Dr Li Yi, the Mandarin teacher of Sarah in BJUT, spoke highly of the performance of the Pakistani students. She said, “In my Chinese class, many international students are from Pakistan. They have impressed me with their hard work and positive attitudes.”
