Perched on a hill in the fashionable coastal town of Viña del Mar – adjoining the port city of Valparaíso – is Chile’s first Confucius Institute. It overlooks a cluster of buildings that could symbolize Chile’s long march towards globalization: the German School; the sprawling Jumbo supermarket (whose arch-rival Lider was recently acquired by US-based WalMart); and the Universidad Santo Tomás, the first Chilean university with a campus in China.
Inside the Confucius Institute red paper lanterns, shiny new texts and teachers who never stop smiling exude the spirit of determined optimism essential to learning Mandarin in a city so lacking in Chinese culture that there’s no place to eat a decent plate of Peking Duck.
