Students of the Portuguese Summer Course at the University of Macau gathered at “Macau’s highest point” for a farewell dinner offered by the Macau Government Tourist Office. Macau Tower received the 270 students of the Portuguese Language and Culture Course of the University of Macau for a last meeting before returning home. Half of the participants of the XXI Portuguese Summer course came from Beijng, Shanghai, Taipei, Bangkok, Hanoi, Tokyo, Seoul and Pusan, while the remainder are local students. For the students that traveled to Macau to take part in the course, the territory offers a kind of a Portuguese experience without having to travel to Portuguese speaking countries like Portugal or Brazil. In their “luggage” they take back home more Portuguese knowledge and memories of Macau. “When I entered Macau for the first time at the Border Gate I was very excited”, says Zhu Lin, student at the Shanghai International Studies University. “By taking the course, I hope I can broaden my Portuguese ability and know better this wonderful city. Macau is very different from Mainland cities, it has very special characteristics”, describes the student from China’s biggest city. The month-long program of classes includes several workshops on Portuguese folk dances, tours around the old city streets, visits to museums and monuments, along with gastronomic events. The cultural and sightseeing tours are an important part of the course curriculum to showcase Macau, a tourism city. “These occasions are opportunities that allow all of them to see also this angle of Macau that is the hospitality, the good treatment and manners when receiving visitors”, points out University of Macau Portuguese Department director Maria Antónia Espadinha. In Macau, a city built on more than 450 years’ interchange of Chinese and Portuguese cultures, after the establishment of the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in 1999, Portuguese is, along with Chinese, one of the official languages. The Macau Government Tourist Office supports initiatives like the Portuguese Summer Course of the University of Macau, as well as exhibitions, conferences and other events in order to help organizers to show the best of Macau to participants from other parts of the world.
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