Chinese Culture room opens in Armenia's northern Stepanavan

A Chinese Culture room opened Saturday at the Lori Region's Hovhannes Tumanyan Secondary School in northern Armenian city of Stepanavan.

The Chinese Culture room was established on the initiative of the school director, Seda Tunian, as her students have showed increasing interest and enthusiasm in learning Chinese culture and language.

At the opening ceremony, Tian Erlong, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of China, said that China is a political, economic and trade partner of Armenia. Cultural and educational exchanges and interactions between the two countries are also very important.

For her part, Armenia's parliament Deputy Speaker Hermine Naghdalyan said that today was a special day for Stepanavan.

"First of all, the school management and its students gave the city a wonderful area of Chinese culture, secondly the event was attended by the Chinese Ambassador and his wife, and it is a great honor," said Naghdalyan.

The school director Seda Tunian also noted that the school has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Confucius Institute at Yerevan State Linguistic University. Representatives of the Confucius Institute in Armenia expressed readiness to open a center for the study of the Chinese language.

At the beginning of the opening ceremony, the school's students presented performances based on the works of Hovhannes Tumanyan, an Armenian writer and national poet. The school is named after him.

Chinese tea, calligraphy, paintings of Chinese themes and literature, information brochures about China were also exhibited in the Culture room, which attracted visitors from Stepanavan, a city with a population of over 11,000.