East China Normal University has been playing a pivotal role in teaching Mandarin to foreigners at a time when global interest in the language is growing.Since 2008, when the Global Institute of Chinese Language Teacher Education was established at the university, more than 1,000 Mandarin teachers from overseas and China have taken classes annually there."The mission of the institute is to cultivate Mandarin teachers for foreign countries and regions based on their requirements," says Ding Anqi, vice-dean of the School of International Chinese Studies at ECNU and deputy director of t...