Chinese Learning Sweeps Guyana; First Lady Takes HSK

On March 24th, local time, the Confucius Institute at the University of Guyana held its first HSK examination of 2018, and even had the attendance of Sandra Granger, the nation’s first lady, who took HSK level 1 test. After the security check from her secretary and bodyguards, Sandra walked into the exam room and took her examination.

Examination room

It is worth mentioning that 70-year-old Sandra is the niece of the first Asian president in Guyana. She was also a linguistic major at college. Since this January, she has been attending the Chinese class offered by the Confucius Institute at the University of Guyana in Guyana's Foreign Ministry. Before that, the Confucius Institute had already offered two terms of Chinese classes. The learners took examinations at the end of each term, and were issued certificates of Chinese language learning if they passed the exams. Attracted by such formal teaching methodology, Sandra decided to sign up for the Chinese class in the Foreign Ministry. She hoped that she could track her progress by taking this exam.

An invigilator helping Sandra fill in her personal information on the answer sheet

Sandra Granger（middle）and staff of the Confucius Institute

At this term’s exam, participants constituted a great many variety, including not only college students, but also learners from the Foreign Ministry, the Council Office, the Presidential Palace and other functional departments. High level participants also increased, with some even going for HSK 5. After the examination, the candidates were expectant of the test results, hoping to get good grades and continue to challenge the next HSK test.

Story by Zhao Qian