BUDAPEST, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Among some 90 students who applied for 2019 school places of the Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual School, a public school in the quiet neighborhoods of the 15th District of Budapest, only 27 were admitted, head of the school Erdelyi Zsuzsanna told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The increasing popularity of the school in the capital city has strained the adequacy of the school's places supply in recent years.
With nearly 500 students in 11 grades today, the Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual School started with only 87 students in four grades when it was established 15 years ago.
In 2004, the first year of the school, most of the school's students were children of Chinese expats in Hungary. But the school's makeup today is a different story: besides some 120 Chinese students, 30 mixed-race students and more than 10 students from other parts of Asia, the rest are Hungarian students.
As the only full-time public school in Central and Eastern Europe that incorporates Chinese into its curriculum just as the local language, the school saw increased interest in Chinese teaching from parents.
Chinese has become one of the foreign language requirements for Hungary's college entrance exam.
With the fast development of the bilateral cooperation in various fields under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the two countries have witnessed increasing exchanges and communication.
In 2018, a total of 256,000 Chinese tourists visited Hungary, an increase of 11.06 percent year-on-year.
Szpisjak Adam, a fourth-grader, told Xinhua in fluent Chinese that he aims to become an interpreter in Hungarian, Chinese and English in the future. Szpisjak told Xinhua that he is spending five hours on average everyday in Chinese learning now.
Kukta Eva, parent of Fodor Kristof, a student of the bilingual school, told Xinhua that she made up her mind to send her son to the school when he was only two years old, because she wanted the Chinese language to be his first foreign language.
English is certainly important, Kukta said, but Chinese now appears more important to her family, who now routinely attends celebrations in the Lunar New Year.
Karsai Zsuzsanna, who studied at Hungary's prestigious Eotvos Lorand University and then enhanced her Chinese at two Chinese universities before becoming a teacher at the Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual School, said she was a bit jealous of the students that she is now teaching, as the students could start their Chinese learning at such an early age with the help from native Chinese speakers.
Guo Jianming, deputy principal of the school, said that the rise in popularity of the school coincides with some world events related to China, such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the Shanghai Expo 2010 and China-proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.
The BRI accords with the Hungarian government's "Opening to the East" policy, and the two countries witnessed increased people-to-people exchanges.
The school also enjoys wide and substantial support from two governments, with many Chinese leaders coming to the school during their visit to Hungary.
And the school has indeed achieved great success in Chinese teaching, with many winners of the "Chinese Bridge" contest in Hungary, an annual Chinese proficiency competition for non-Chinese college students, from the Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual School, according to Guo.
But Erdelyi, the principal, aims higher. She hoped her school could be further expanded and the Chinese-language teaching level could be increased further. Enditem
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