Kia ora koutou 你好！ New Year’s greetings from the Confucius Institute in Auckland. We are back to business and returned to the office now, after a 4-month working-from-home and the holiday break.

The City Campus of the University of Auckland is open now, so is our office at Pembridge House, 31 Princes Street. However, the University has set up a strict Covid protection framework plan for health and safety concerns. For details, please see UoA’s Covid information for our community.

For visitors, please note that you must bring a digital or hard copy version of your My Vaccine Pass, and be ready to present it upon request while on campus. You must keep trace-track by using the Government’s NZ COVID Tracer app before entering our premises and also use face coverings and masks.

We have updated or are working on the porgramme list for the new year, including projects, exams, courses, and competitions. The business will be back to normal, even better, as long as the conditions allow. Please visit our website from time to time or follow CI Auckland on social media for recent updates.

The City Campus of the University of Auckland is closed until further notice. See UoA’s Covid information for the community.

The Confucius Institute office in Pembridge House is closed too. All CI staff will be working from home until Q1 2022.

• The CTCSOL interview will be held online on December 11 and 12.
• The December Chinese Immersion Week in Rotorua has been canceled.
• The HSK test on December 4 has been canceled. 
• The HSK test on October 17 has been canceled.
• The CTCSOL on September 25 will go ahead as scheduled.
• The YCT test on August 21 has been canceled.
• All on-site language classes have been postponed or moved online.

Originally published on Stuff by Charlotte Carter on 8 Jan 2019

Auckland police officers are learning Mandarin in a bid to better engage with the super city’s growing Chinese population.

The initiative, led by Ethnic Responsiveness Manager for Tamaki Makaurau, Jessica Phuang, was born out of conversations Phuang had with the Chinese community which identified a need for the lessons.

“Often, Chinese people find it very difficult to communicate with the police, but it’s more the culture understanding that’s needed as well,” Phuang said.

“While I’m trying to help the Chinese people understand Kiwi culture, I thought, you need two hands to clap.”

So far, 20 Auckland police officers have completed a 10-lesson level one Mandarin course, and 11 officers have completed the level two course.

Directors from eighteen Confucius Institutes in Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand visited Auckland on 27th October for the annual Joint Conference of Oceanian Confucius Institutes. The delegates also include representatives from our foundational partners, Confucius Institute Headquarters and Fudan University. This is the second time CI Auckland hosting a regional CI conference since last time in 2010.

As part of the preogramme, the delegates visited four local schools, Westlake Boys’ High School, St Peter’s College, Meadowbank School, and Newmarket School, three of which are Confucius Classrooms. The delegates had chances with some field observations of the Chinese teaching programmes in NZ schools.

In the first session of the conference, CI Auckland shared a panel discussion with the delegation on the topic, “Chinese in Schools: A New Zealand Experience”. The guest panelists are Sarah Wang, Chinese language teacher at Onehunga High School and former Mandarin Language Assistant (2012 class), and Craig Holt, principal of Willow Park School. Nora Yao, director of CI Auckland, and Janine Chin, manager of CI Auckland, joined the discussion with them from different perspectives. The panel discussion received a lot of feedbacks from the delegates from overseas.