Age-old wisdom and modern techniques

As China's Confucius Institute celebrates its 10th anniversary, its influence is being felt not only in language tuition, but also in fields as diverse as medicine and the arts.

When delegates gathered in Cambridge, England, for the first annual national conference on Chinese teaching in schools in 2004, they could hardly have foreseen how far Chinese-language learning would advance in the following 10 years.

Though China had begun opening up 15 years earlier and had joined the World Trade Organization in 2002, its trade with Europe was a mere 10th of what it is today.