Peking into the past

Drawn to China by a love of history, Tunisian student Belhadj Imen found a Chinese opera performance opening the door to life-changing experience

When Belhadj Imen went to China in 2005 she was fuelled by her language studies, a love of history and childhood tales of the Great Wall. But it was a performance that paved the way for her passage to the country with which she had been so fascinated.

Now a fourth year PhD student at Peking University researching relations between China and the Maghreb, Imen arrived in China in 2005 after winning first prize in a competition organized by the Hanyuqiao Project (a project promoting Chinese language and culture).

Before coming to China, Imen, 32, was studying Chinese at university in Tunisia.

"Attending the Hanyuqiao competition was such an exciting and interesting experience in my life," Imen says. "Without this competition, I could never have come to China and become an academic researching Chinese and African relations."

She was among 75 competitors from 39 countries in the competition and needed to do something to stand out from the crowd.

"My Chinese tutor told me that most participants would choose to sing Chinese songs in the competition, so we must prepare something different," she says.

They opted for Peking Opera, and Imen got down to practicing for the event.

"You have to admit that Peking Opera is really a beautiful art if you take a look at the performers' gestures and the expression in their eyes, but it is difficult to learn," Imen says.

"I was quite nervous to do it at the beginning, but I thank my teachers who gave me a lot of encouragement."

Imen's interest in Chinese history began when she was just 8 years old.

"I was told by my parents that the Great Wall is the only man-made structure that can be seen from the moon, and it is in China," Imen says.

She was obsessed with China from then on. In her first year of the university, she dropped her original major in forest engineering and transferred to another university to study Chinese.

"When I started university, there was no such thing as a major as Chinese in my country, but as soon as there was one, I gave up my previous major and chose Chinese."

Her competition win came in perfect time, during the summer of her graduation, granting her a reward that changed her life.

First prize was funding from the Chinese government for a master's degree in Chinese literature at Peking University.

In 2006 Imen began to think about a PhD in Sino-African relations, after taking part in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing.

"I found a growing interest in Sino-African relations as more and more people around me began to pay attention to the subject," she says.

She decided to focus on relations between China and the Maghreb region in northwest Africa, both because it is where she's from and because there was a lack of research into its relations with China.

"As I am from the Maghreb region, I realized the importance of research in this field," she says.

Imen speaks five languages - French and Arabic, which she learnt at school, German, which she studied at high school, English and now Chinese.

Despite her linguistic background, she found Mandarin difficult to learn in the beginning.

"There are four tones for each Chinese character, and if you make one mistake in the tone, the meaning of the word can be totally different," she says.

To help her learning progress, Imen took on extra work outside of classroom assignments.

"I would write some Chinese articles by myself, trying to express some quite simple things, such as what my room looked like," she says.

Talking with her Chinese teachers outside of class also helped with her spoken Mandarin.

"I became the tour guide for my Chinese teachers, taking them to interesting places in my hometown, and they would correct my pronunciation during our conversations," she says.

During her third year at university, she went to China to study at Beijing Language and Culture University for a year.

"Campus life in Beijing is different from Tunisia," Imen says. "I was restricted to my life at home and school in Tunisia, but I made a lot of friends and joined many club activities in Beijing."

She is now secretary general of the African Students' Association at Peking University. Apart from organizing activities for African students in the university, Imen also delivers speeches on the history of the Maghreb region.

"I am very interested in history as it is a subject full of mystery," she says. "Whenever I come to a historical site, I imagine how people lived there during the old times, and I think about what they wore and ate."

Imen's hometown, Sidi Bou Said, is in northern Tunisia, close to the ancient city of Carthage.

It was Carthage that first inspired her interest in history, which later developed into a desire to learn more about China.

"I like Beijing as it is a city full of history, even though it has been modernized a lot today," she says.

"When I climbed onto the Great Wall, I was amazed and could not imagine how the ancient people could have made it."

Imen likes traveling in her spare time, and has been to 20 cities in seven years during her stay in China.

"My hometown is a famous tourist spot, and I found China has many places for traveling too," she says.

"Guilin is my favorite place as it has the most beautiful natural scenery in the world."

Imen hopes in the future to establish a research center in Chinese studies in Tunisia as there are few such centers in Africa.

"There is only one research center in Chinese studies in South Africa," she says. "Other research centers doing Asian studies tend to focus on Japan, and it would be meaningful to have more research centers in Chinese studies established in Africa."

liaoxue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/01/2013 page22)