Basketball Game to be Broadcast in Chinese

Nov. 22, 2006

LAWRENCE, Kan. –

How do you say “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” in Chinese? Listen to the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />University of Kansas men’s basketball game next Tuesday to find out.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />

The Jayhawks’ Nov. 28 game vs. Dartmouth at Allen Fieldhouse will be broadcast in Chinese and streamed on the Kansas Athletics Web site, kuathletics.com. The event is sponsored by KU’s Confucius Institute. Tipoff is at 7 p.m.

Announcers Zhiqun “James” Liang and Sheree Willis will call the action. The event marks the first time in Big 12 history that a game has been broadcast in Chinese.

Liang, a visiting scholar and senior adviser to the executive director at the Confucius Institute, has an extensive background in basketball,including four years as a starting guard for the Central China Huazhong Normal University basketball team. Willis is the associate executive director of the Confucius Institute.

A group of students from Liang’s alma mater will gather in Wuhan, China, to listen to the broadcast. A similar gathering involving KU students and faculty will take place at the Plum Tree Chinese restaurant, 2620 Iowa St. in Lawrence.

In conjunction with the broadcast, the Confucius Institute will produce a glossary of basketball terms in Chinese and English to be distributed to Chinese language students at KU and at high schools throughout the state.

KU’s Confucius Institute was the fourth such institute to open in the United States. Other institutes are operated by University of Maryland, ChicagoPublic Schools and New York’s China Institute.

China has a long-term goal of establishing more than 100 Confucius

Institutes and estimates that by 2010, nearly 100 million people worldwide will have learned Chinese as a foreign language.

-KU-