Students in UK wowed by time-honored cultural treasures of China

Joan Deslandes, head teacher of Kingsford Community School, said that the next generation "will need to understand China's culture and be able to work in the Mandarin language" in today's global context.

"The fact that more and more schools are incorporating Mandarin into their curriculum reflects the recognition that has been made in how important this is," she added. Her school has been teaching Chinese since 2000.

During the event, six on-site workshops offered the students an opportunity to experience Chinese culture, such as typography of the Chinese characters, Kung Fu, and Chinese fan dance.

"All people-to-people exchanges are really important in education," Katharine Carruthers, director of IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society's Confucius Institute for Schools, told Xinhua during the event.

She said that Chinese children learning English and British children learning Chinese will be the "bedrock" of the relationship between the two countries, and it's important for them to "find out they have a lot more in common than there are differences."