2025 MLA Farewell Ceremony and Celebration
A “Love Letter” to Mandarin Language Assistants
– Address at the 2025 MLA Farewell Ceremony
Dear Mandarin Language Assistant Teachers,
As I am standing here to share the farewell remark with you, my feeling is mixed – a mixture of pride, gratitude and sadness.
When you stepped off the plane ten months ago, I welcomed you at the campus guest house of the University of Auckland. On that occasion, I could see what you carried with you was more than your luggage. I also saw from your eyes your expectations – expectations to make contributions to the new community in a new land.
You did make a lot of contributions to the new communities over the past ten months, especially in teaching Mandarin language in 39 primary and secondary schools across the wider Auckland region from Northland down to Waikato. You have spent numerous days (and sometime nighttime) preparing teaching plans and designing classroom activities. You have inspired young children to say their first words in a new language. You have watched shy students find confidence and motivated curious students to discover new horizon through the learning of Mandarin inside and outside the classrooms. What you have contributed is not merely teaching another language to Kiwi kids. You have also been contributing as bridge builders and road workers.
As bridge builders, you have helped to deepen the understanding and communication between the people of New Zealand and China.
As road workers, you have helped to shorten the linguistic and cultural distance between the communities of the two societies,
You contribute, and you also benefit. Through engaging with your students, your school colleagues, your homestay families, and members of the wider communities, I believe, you have acquired a first-hand experience of the sincerity, the simplicity, the sunny spirit and the sunlit warmth of Kiwi culture. You came here as foreigners. As you are leaving, you become part of the story of this place. Your ten-month stay here, I hope, will produce life-long memories of the place and the people of this place.
As you prepare to leave the place and its people, I wish to share with you some of my hopes:
• I hope you look back on your time in New Zealand with a sense of pride
• I hope you remember the differences you have made here
• I hope you continue to learn and grow with the same passion as you showed here
• I hope your future is as bright and promising as you have made your classrooms
I wish to conclude my remark by quoting lyrics from a popular Cantonese song called “Somewhere in Life, We Meet Again” (人生何处不相逢) –
In farewell, I offer my true heart.
Silently, I endure what fate brings.
Perhaps, on some future day and month,
I may meet you again,
To gather and relive the memories we shared.
Goodbye for now! And the very best of luck!
By Director of Confucius Institute in Auckland, Dr Xuelin Zhou