Language opens door to a richer academic experience

When Mahmoud Soliman calls a taxi in Shanghai, drivers often mistake him for a local because of his fluent Mandarin. The illusion lasts until he opens the door. "The first reaction is always the pyramids," says Soliman, an Egyptian lecturer at Shanghai International Studies University. "Even drivers who have never visited Egypt know about the pyramids and Egyptian history."

Such encounters, repeated in everyday interactions, reflect a growing grassroots affinity between two ancient civilizations. Now that connection is gaining academic weight as Egypt prepares to host the World Conference on China Studies, highlighting how civilizations are drawing on their pasts while building increasingly close ties.

Mohamed Ahmed Saad Obied arrived in China in 2015 with a simple thought. "China has 1.4 billion people," recalls the 31-year-old doctoral student in translation studies at SISU. "I thought if I studied Chinese, I could communicate with more people and make more friends."

What he found went far beyond numbers. After chatting with locals and sharing glimpses of Chinese life with audiences back home through social media, Obied discovered a rich academic discipline.

"China studies encompasses both ancient and modern China," he explains. "Ancient China offers thousands of years of accumulated cultural wisdom. Then there's contemporary China with its technology, systems, solutions and remarkable speed of development."

This dual nature of China studies, which embraces tradition while examining modernity, resonates particularly with scholars from Egypt, itself an ancient civilization. "It gives people an opportunity to realize that the century need not be dominated by a single system," Obied says. "Multiple civilizations can coexist, each building systems suited to their own contexts."

Obied has spent years documenting linguistic and cultural parallels between Chinese and Arabic expressions, compiling about 200 examples of closely aligned proverbs and sayings.

"For example, when Chinese people say 'speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives', we have the same concept in the Egyptian dialect. We say 'speak of the cat and it jumps in'," he says. "The words differ, but the meaning is almost identical."

Cao was a controversial warlord from the Three Kingdoms (220-280) period.

Exploring deeper values, Obied points out that Chinese characters can offer insights into ways of seeing the world. "The Chinese character ming, meaning bright and part of the word wenming or civilization, contains elements of the sun and the moon," he says. "It suggests that true civilization brings warmth and light to our world."

For Israa Emam, holding a doctorate in translation studies from SISU, the journey toward bridging the two cultures began on Friday nights in her childhood home, watching Jackie Chan movies brought home by her father.

"It was Chinese kung fu combined with Chinese humor," she recalls. "I would dream about visiting China. When I heard that people studying Chinese had opportunities to go abroad, I knew I had to experience this magical Eastern civilization."

Now teaching Arabic in Shanghai, Emam sees translation as her primary mission. "If we want to tell China's story well, it must be through translation," she says. "Translation is the most important communication tool. It is how Chinese culture spreads." She also produces content on Chinese culture for her social media channel, sharing daily observations with her followers.

To deepen that reach, she advocates translating traditional Chinese classics into Arabic. "The essence of Chinese culture lies in these classical texts," she says.

"For ordinary Egyptians and Arabs, China is still sometimes viewed through Western eyes," Emam adds. "We're geographically distant. How do we close that gap? We must study Chinese culture."

For Soliman, cultural exchange has grown into a lifelong career. "I used to say I hoped to become a seed spreading Chinese culture," he says. "Now it has sprouted and grown very large."

His Chinese students, he finds, are equally receptive to Arab culture. "Through learning Arabic, they begin to understand Arab civilization more deeply," he says. "Language opens the door, and behind it are values and ways of seeing the world."

Food provides an even more immediate connection. "In China, people say: 'You're not a hero until you've climbed the Great Wall, and you haven't truly experienced China until you've tasted Beijing duck,'" Soliman tells his students. "I also tell them: you're not a hero until you've seen the pyramids, and you haven't truly experienced Egypt until you've tasted our pigeon dish."

Official figures suggest that interest in cross-cultural understanding is growing. Egyptian universities now have 36 Chinese-language departments, alongside three Confucius institutes and two Confucius classrooms, according to Lu Chunsheng, minister counselor at the Chinese embassy in Egypt. He was speaking at an international Chinese language day event held in April. As of early 2026, more than 4,000 Egyptian students were studying in China.

Popular media is also helping to close the cultural distance. Egyptian streaming platforms now broadcast Chinese television dramas dubbed in Arabic.

"Although my mother doesn't speak Chinese, she watches Chinese series," Soliman says. "She has seen shows like Empresses in the Palace and A Little Reunion. Through these dubbed dramas, ordinary people come to know China better."

The exchange flows the other way too. "More Chinese people now travel to Egypt despite the long distance," Soliman observes. "They experience Arab culture firsthand, which brings them closer to our civilization."

Beyond teaching, he regularly guides Chinese friends on tours to Egypt, saying such personal journeys help build people-to-people ties layer by layer.

Reflecting on the deeper connection between civilizations, Obied invokes the words of renowned Chinese Sociologist Fei Xiaotong: "Appreciate your own beauty, appreciate the beauty of others; when beauty is shared, the world becomes one."

Egypt's historic role as a crossroads of civilizations, he suggests, makes it a natural partner in that vision, with its own traditions of balance and synthesis echoing the spirit of harmony in Chinese thought.

Soliman frames the connection in terms of the next generation. "Young people are the future," he says, invoking an Arab proverb that has come to embody his calling: "Seek knowledge, even if it is as far away as China."