In celebration of UN Chinese Language Day on April 20, London's Finchley secondary school recently organized Chinese cultural classes, letting students explore the language and culture by writing traditional Chinese-style poetry in their native language.

In the class, teachers explained various elements of the rich Chinese poetic tradition to students in English, covering Chinese quatrains, rhyme schemes, tones, and the country's poetic culture. This enabled British students to learn how to write Chinese-style poems, despite not writing in Chinese, drawing from their own feelings.
"Doing poems in different languages, I feel like it's really beautiful, especially in Chinese. The character thing is really beautiful. It's really interesting how it rhymes too. That's interesting," said India, a student at Finchley who attended the Chinese culture class.
"I really like how you kind of dive deep into the different meanings of words and how different words can give you a different feeling in the poem, like certain words would make you feel sad and others would make you feel happy," said Autumn, a student.
Students at the school also learn the Chinese language in regular classes that often make use of cultural elements in this way.
"I really enjoy the Mandarin classes at CCF (Christ's College Finchley), especially because we're introduced not only to the language but also to the culture," said Ruben, a student.
The Chinese language is one of the six working languages of the UN, along with English, French, Russian, Arabic and Spanish. This year, various celebration events were held across the world to promote the Chinese language and culture.