Chinese Day at SWPS University

The lecture will focus on different approaches to Chinese Studies and on opportunities these studies present for students and graduates. It is important to know that language and cultural competences are crucial for many professions related to international business, politics and culture and although we might be familiar with Chinese history, spirituality and traditions, there is still a lot to learn about modern China.

For students of any foreign language, idioms present a challenge. Idioms are expressions whose actual meaning is far from their literal meaning. For example, "to swollow whole dates" is a Chinese idiom, which has nothing to do with dates, but means "to take in information thoughtlessly, without analyzing it". Dr. Yee Ting-yu will present various methods of teaching Chengyu (Chinese idioms) to Polish students.

The lecture will be delivered by Piotr Plebaniak, who is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan. Mr. Plebaniak has been researching the art-of-war techniques popular in ancient Greece and China and how these two different philosophical approaches have influenced the European and the Confucian cultures. The lecture will focus on archaeolinguistics - the study of the distant human past that uses a combined archaeological and linguistic evidence to reconstruct aspects of past cultures.