Libro Cina.pmd - Città di Piero

16
Abstract
Conoscere la Cina
emozioni e delle riflessioni scaturite dalla eccezionale esperienza vissuta da studenti
e docenti del nostro Istituto.
Walter Veltroni, Sindaco di Roma, ha arricchito il testo con un suo straordinario
intervento. Riccardo Masini, Preside della Facoltà di Lingue Orientali alla Sapienza
di Roma, ha contribuito da par suo con l’Introduzione alla Parte Prima. Di Roberto
Ruffino, Segretario Generale di Intercultura Italia, è la brillante Postfazione.
Matteo Martelli *
PREFACE
Speaking and writing about China is not easy. For many reasons. The complexity and
immensity of a multimillennial history must be taken into consideration. We must be careful
about the many prejudices coming from what people are saying about China today. They
make us reflect on the opinions of the most knowledgeable scholars, who encourage us to
seriously and scrupulously learn more about China and the Chinese so as to avoid
approaches and interpretations that have so often been superficial, revealing themselves to
be not only often wrong, but also misleading.
Our relationship with China, the relationship of the high school “Liceo Città di Piero”
(students, teachers, parents), began with the organization of a week (from October 16 th to
21st, 2006) dedicated to fostering friendship between Italy and China, an initiative promoted
by the Office of Public Education in January 2006.
The week in October allowed us to learn more about China, its history, its institutions. We
had contacts with representatives from the Chinese People’s Republic in Tuscany, the
Consulate in Florence. We succeeded in having contact with some centers studying Chinese
language and culture (Istituto Confucio, Facoltà di Studi Orientali dell’Università’ “La
Sapienza” di Roma, Ca ‘ Foscari in Venice).
The first tangible result was initiating extracurricular courses for learning the Chinese
language which students and adults participated in with interest. Young university graduates,
former students of our Institute (Romina Bravaccini, Agnese Bruni, Caterina Milli), with the
decisive support of Zhai Ran, a Chinese journalist with a university degree in literature who
lives and teaches at the Università per Stranieri (university for foreigners) in Perugia, took
part in this fascinating initiative that introduced our students to the language and the
culture of this great Asian country.
In November (2006) the idea of organizing an exchange program with a Chinese high
school was proposed. In the school year 2005/2006 the local Center of “Intercultura” had
already made the courageous choice of sending a young student, Irene Colantoni, from
the high school “ Liceo Giovanni from Castiglione” of Castiglion Fiorentino (AR) to China.
It meant involving the Center, contacting the national organization and verifying the
possibility of having an exchange program in the school year 2006/2007. So the idea of an
exchange program began to take shape and became a reality: the Italian group visited
Shijiazhuang from March 17 to March 30 and the Chinese group from Middle School n. 42
of S. Hebei Province, came to Sansepolcro from May 4 to May 17.