This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Chinese Bridge program. Since its launch in 2002, the platform, which targets young people worldwide, has hosted multiple editions of the competition across more than 100 countries and regions and attracting hundreds of thousands of participants.

"As Chinese learning continues to evolve, more international students are moving from language acquisition to deep cultural understanding, playing a greater role in cross-cultural communication," said Qu Kai, Party secretary of Tianjin Normal University.

Sijichen, a student from Russia who has studied Chinese for 18 months, hopes to pursue a career in China's gaming industry.

"Black Myth: Wukong sparked my interest in Chinese culture. Learning Chinese has helped me better understand it and brought me closer to working in this field," he said.

To date, Chinese language education has been introduced in more than 180 countries and regions, with over 25 million learners worldwide. In more than 90 countries, Chinese has been incorporated into national education systems.

"Globally, Chinese learning has progressed from the first stage of language acquisition to a second stage of deeper cultural understanding," Zhong said.

Ma Yucong and Jin Beiyi contributed to this story.