The Confucius Institute in Sofia and The Chinese Cultural Center In Sofia Have Carried Out the Launching Ceremony Of Their “Chinese language + Traditional Chinese Medicine” Project Jointly Organised By Them

On March 15th 2025, the Confucius Institute in Sofia and the Chinese Cultural Centre in Sofia have jointly held the launching ceremony of their ‘Chinese + TCM’ project. Mr Hong Hai - the Director of the Chinese Cultural Centre in Sofia, Mr Anton Agov – an expert lecturer on Traditional Chinese Medicine at the Centre, Mrs Aksiniya Koleva – the Bulgarian director of the Confucius Institute in Sofia, Prof. Chen Ying – the Chinese director of the Confucius Institute in Sofia, as well as students from the Chinese Medicine classes, teachers from the Confucius Institute and local Chinese language and culture enthusiasts, overall almost 50 people, have attended the ceremony.
In his speech, the Director Mr Hong Hai has said that the project model of ‘empowering language with culture and decoding culture with language’ allows Chinese language learning to rise from ‘memorising words’ to ‘perceiving civilisation’, and from ‘classroom tasks’ to ‘life interests’- something that will enable more local people to feel the charm of Chinese language and the Chinese medical culture. The Bulgarian director of the Confucius Institute in Sofia Mrs Aksiniya Koleva has said that the ‘Chinese + TCM’ project is a new project jointly created by the Confucius Institute in Sofia and the Chinese Cultural Centre in Sofia. The project combines the Chinese language and culture more tightly aiming to achieve sharing of the resourses, taking advantage of each other's strengths, and assisting the humanistic exchanges between China and Bulgaria. Mr Anton Agov - the expert Chinese medicine lecturer at the Sofia Chinese Cultural Centre, has introduced the teaching content and the format of the TCM part of the course. Prof. Chen Ying - the Chinese director of the Confucius Institute in Sofia, has answered to the questions of the participants and has introduced the selection of teaching materials and the teaching schedule of the Chinese language part of the course.
A teacher from the Confucius Institute in Sofia has demonstrated her Chinese language teaching on site by taking the Chinese characters comprising the words “Chinese language” and “Chinese medicine’as study examples. She has introduced each one of the Chinese characters, starting from their pronunciations to the evolution of their shapes and meanings. Eventually, the participants have tried to write Chinese characters with great interest.
The ‘Chinese + Traditional Chinese Medicine’course is part of the new ‘Chinese + Art’programme comprising a series of courses offered by the Confucius Institute in Sofia. The course will start in late March, with a total of five weeks of classes. The participants who manage to complete the course will receive a certificate of completion issued by the Confucius Institute in Sofia.

The Confucius Institute in Sofia
Text: Chen Chen, Wang Yan
Photos: Wang Yan
Editors: Prof. Chen Ying, Aksiniya Koleva
English translation: Maya Kostadinova

Picture 1. Speech by Mr Hong Hai - Director of the Chinese Cultural Centre in Sofia.

Picture 2. Speech by Mrs Aksiniya Koleva - Director of the Confucius Institute in Sofia.

Picture 3. Introduction to the course by Mr Anton Agov – an expert Lecturer on Traditional Chinese Medicine at the Chinese Cultural Centre in Sofia.

Picture 4. A teacher from the Confucius Institute in Sofia teaching Chinese characters on site.

Picture 5. The participants learning how to write Chinese characters.

Picture 6. A group photo at the site.