Confucius Institute will celebrate its anniversary on September 14, 2008.

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The Confucius Institute at the University of Memphis sponsors and hosts many lectures, research seminars, workshops and special events throughout the year. Please check this page periodically for an updated list of events. View a list of past events.

CLASSES

For a complete listing of Continuing Education Classes go to http://registration.xenegrade.com/umce/searchResults.cfm?prgID=16

EVENTS

ACTIVITIES

Spring Semester 2008 in the SCCA

~submitted by Mark Wlodawski, President

In January of this year a few friends and I founded the Student Consortium for Chinese Awareness. It’s been a fun semester full of developments and growth as a club. We coordinated 3 successful events: Lantern Fest and two nights during which we showed Chinese movies: “Warlords” and “Biozombie.” They were all located at the Wesley Center, the Methodist student organization. This is because they allow presentation of copyrighted material and serving food not bought through Aramark, which is a requirement of events held on the University campus. Lantern Fest and our showing of Biozombie were both posted in the calendar of events in the Memphis Flyer newspaper.

Our first event, Lantern Fest, was a celebration of the Chinese New Year and Lantern Festival. We acquired the sponsorship of two Asian restaurants: Mosa Asian Bistro and PF Changs, both of which donated hundreds of dollars worth of food, and they are both willing to donate again. In return we pasted their logos onto the posters we designed for the event.

Our second event was presentation of a Chinese action movie called Warlords. We supplied the food for that movie and designed another poster for it. We attracted 30 guests to that.

Before our third event we received a request for an interview that was to be played over the school radio station, WUMR “The Jazz Lover.” During the interview we mentioned our sponsors, goals as a club, history, members, advisers, and discussed current issues in China such as the Olympics, Tibetan rebellions, and concerns over safety.

Third and final event for the semester was another movie night for a Hong Kong movie named Biozombie. We again received sponsorship from local restaurants: Papa John’s donated 10 pizzas and we provided additional food. Approximately 30 people came and we considered it a success. To promote the event we designed and distributed copies of another poster, paid for two advertisements to appear in the school newspaper, arranged to have a prize for a zombie costume contest, and invited many people on the web sites Myspace.com and Facebook.com.

We are now planning our fall events, which include exploration of Confucius and other Chinese literature, coordinated events with other clubs on campus as well as Rhodes college’s ASIA club (All Students Interested in Asia), acquiring more members, designing t shirts, and showing more Chinese movies. We have high hopes for the future and look forward to further development.