The colorful diesel train ride in the mountains of Sri Lanka is a unique experience, rumbling through the swaying forests and tea plantations, escaping from the hustle and bustle of cities. A few hours after leaving Colombo, you will reach the Sabaragamuwa province. They say it is named after its former indigenous inhabitants “Sabara”.
Sabaragamuwa University is located in the southern foothills of the Central Mountains. It is a beautiful and tranquil paradise.
Sabaragamuwa University is one of the only two universities in Sri Lanka that offer Chinese Language major for undergraduate students. The Chinese major was established in 2007 at the university’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Languages, and the Confucius Classroom opened in 2019 and lecturers from China arrive here to teach.
Professor Cheng Cailan taught Chinese at Sabaragamuwa University from 2015 to 2016. Although the campus is a beautiful place to be in with its attractive wilderness, loneliness was still a huge test of will for her because she was the only lecturer who lived on campus while other lecturers and students lived off campus.
During weekends and holidays, she was the only person at the campus accommodation area. She had been afraid to stay alone most nights, unsure if the security guards were working.
“I was scared. I felt like being isolated. in the beginning.”
During Sinhala and Tamil New Year holidays, she used to stay alone in the accommodation and had not even moved the door latch for a week. She was so homesick that she had once burst into tears when she found the key to her home in China, in her hand bag.
However, the responsibilities were far greater than her loneliness. Putting aside her homesickness, she put all her energy into work. Professor Cheng spent a lot of time going through the course content revising it, prepared the teaching plan and searching materials, while working closely with two young local teachers for their training. She used her spare time to organize cultural activities to help local teachers understand Chinese culture better. Her work laid a good foundation for the establishment of the Confucius Classroom.
Since the establishment of the Confucius
Classroom, Huanggang Normal University in China has sent two more professors here and Professor Cheng was no longer alone.
Currently, more than 200 students learn different Chinese courses at Sabaragamuwa University.
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Sabaragamuwa University has also become a Chinese HSK & HSKK test center. Earlier, if central and southern regions students needed to take the Chinese proficiency test, they would have had to travel a long distance to Colombo. Zheng Youjie, the Chinese Dean of the Confucius Classroom at Sabaragamuwa University initiated the test center seeing students travel long distances.
There were many challenges. Standards for the establishment of the test center were difficult to meet. For example, there was a requirement of at least 300 test appliers each year, a safety room to keep the test papers, qualified test personnel, and independent servers and computer network, etc. “Except for the three Chinese teachers who have obtained qualifications, it was difficult to meet the other requirements,” he said.
“During the International Chinese Education Conference in Changsha, I presented the enthusiasm of our students, and the significance of the establishment of a test center in Sabaragamuwa University. Finally, the leaders of Chinese Test International were deeply touched by our students’ passion. With the support of Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences and Languages, Sabaragamuwa University, we were officially declared a Chinese Proficiency Test Center for two years of trial operation.”
To date, the test center has held four exams with more than 170 candidates sitting for them. During the COVID pandemic period, the center has been a great convenience for people who are in need of Chinese language certificates.
Professor Yang Li spoke highly of her students. She said that Sri Lankan students are passionate, creative and imaginative. “The younger generation is good at using social media. They love to share interesting things with me,” she said and added that she is very proud of her students and treat them as friends.
The Confucius Classroom of Sabaragamuwa University has achieved good ranks in the recent 20th Chinese Bridge Competition (Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students) in Sri Lanka. Their student Randunuge S. won the first place in the speech section and Jayawardhana Sachinika won the second place in the writing section. Sachinika also ranked sixth in the competition.