Elham Sadat Mirzania. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Some of these learners are willing to pay a lot of money for a private tutor. As Chinese characters are not easy to learn and memorize by most of the foreigners, some of the traders just study Pinyin to be able to memorize Chinese words and sentences, and their goal is only to learn to speak. These learners are not planning to do any China studies in the future, but just to be able to communicate easier with Chinese while doing business.

Beside Chinese language, acupuncture is also very welcome in Iran. There are some specialists and physicians who are curing different diseases with the help of acupuncture and the number of their patients is increasing. In recent years, these methods have been used for beauty purposes in Tehran, capital of Iran.

Until now, hundreds of students have graduated from Chinese language departments and are mainly doing translation jobs. Also there are a few other universities that wish to establish Chinese departments in the near future. Besides, the new Chinese policy of “One Belt, One Road” would be accomplished with more cooperation among the countries along the ancient Silk Road, including Iran. This policy is mainly focused on political and economic goals, by which the recent Iranian nuclear agreement and lifting of sanctions, would be even easier to carry out. These reasons would cause a highly increasing demand of Chinese language learning and the Chinese language would expect a flourishing future in Iranian society.

Elham Sadat Mirzania is a Chinese language lecturer at Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran, Iran. Her research areas include Chinese language and Chinese literature in Iran. She is currently visiting Beijing to participate in the third Visiting Program for Young Sinologists until July 24.