Portuguese pensioner puts in a good word for Chinese language

LISBON－Luis Raposo, a 74-year-old retired Portuguese jurist, has been fascinated with the characters used in the Chinese language since he started to learn Chinese at the University of Lisbon's Confucius Institute in 2009.

"My name means huli (fox) in Chinese, and they call me 'fox'. In Portugal, the fox is a symbol of cleverness, and I like this name very much," he says.

The written Chinese language is really interesting, he says. The Chinese characters have a logic of their own. Simple strokes are used to form them, and these characters in turn are used to form words and sentences, says Raposo, who joined a one-month summer camp organized by Tianjin Foreign Studies University in 2010 as the oldest student.