When Li Hua arrived in Costa Rica in 2018 she could barely speak Spanish. The only word she knew was hola, meaning hello.

Three years later she plans to record in writing her story as Chinese director of the Confucius Institute of Costa Rica－in Spanish.

"If you want people to understand you, you need to speak their language," she says. That is what she told her Chinese teachers in the institute when she encouraged them to learn Spanish together.

But even for Li, who speaks Chinese, English and French, learning a new language is no easy task.

"Spanish grammar is far more complicated than English and French because it comes from ancient Greek, Hebrew and Latin," she says.

"So it's a big challenge for me and Chinese teachers here."

Li and other teachers learned Spanish from written materials and from interacting with locals, including students. With the progress made, she has found the effort has helped in teaching Chinese.

"A teacher came up with the idea of inviting students to explain Spanish grammar in Chinese in classes to help them better understand Chinese and even their own language," she says.

"Interestingly, the sense of 'I'm also teaching my teacher my language' also increases their passion for Chinese and communication.

"Language learning is a process of mutual communication. In this sense I'm not only a Chinese teacher but a student who learns a lot from my students."

This perception may be illustrated by the following anecdote in which Li found that mutual exchanges with local students opened a window for her to look in a different way at both Chinese and Western culture.

Li was surprised when a student revealed in a class presentation that Li Bai, a well-known poet in ancient China, had married four times.

"I had no idea of the romance until the student told us," she says. "That moment gave me a hint that they often look at a culture in a romantic way. This may be something we miss when we study our mother tongue."

Li taught English creative writing at Renmin University of China in Beijing and has also taught writing in Costa Rica, but in Chinese.

Students encouraged

She encouraged many of her students to write "from their hearts" in 2018 and 2019, she says. Though the words and phrases were simple, deeply buried sentiments surfaced and flowed from the stories.

Li recalls a story by a Costa Rica-born Chinese student. As a young girl she had wanted to learn to ride a bicycle, but her parents were too busy to help her with it. For the girl, her parents seemed to have to work hard every waking hour. So she decided to teach herself. Every day she sat on a bike and moved forward inch by inch with one of her hands leaning against a wall to keep balance. Eventually, after falling off the bike many times, she got the hang of it.

"Stories like this take you into the world of these students, which immediately bonds us together emotionally," Li says.

The writing class has been on ice since COVID-19 reached Costa Rica early last year, but Li hopes it can resume soon.

Li describes her three years in the country as "an extraordinary journey".

"It's so wonderful when I look back. What we want to do in the Confucius Institute is not only to teach Chinese words and phrases but to interact from the heart with students. Language is a bridge that connects hearts of people from different cultures."