Children's Classical Studies--The Mainland and Taiwan Sing the Same Tune

"Is it not a pleasure, having learned something, to try it out at due intervals? Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar? Is it not gentlemanly not to take offence when others fail to appreciate your abilities?"

"Now children, read with me." Every Saturday and Sunday, in the Huashan lecture hall in Yungho, Taipei, this simple mantra brings on a virtual torrent of beautiful recitation. Nigh on 100 parents bring their children here on the weekends, where they read classical Chinese works along with advocate of children's classical studies Wang Tsai-kuei. This lecture hall is also the birthplace of children's classical studies in Taiwan.

Little Li Fu-huei, barely three years old, sits on her father's lap reciting the 3000-odd-character-long essay by Zhuangzi, "Man in the World, Associated with Other Men." Although her speech is still very childish, she recites the entire essay from memory, making not a single mistake. Zhou Hong, renowned on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as mainland China's foremost specialist on family education, in Taiwan on a visit, is dumbstruck by Li's performance: "Children really do have astounding potential!"

classical studies cause.

Confucius for the new millennium

The children's classical studies movement in Taiwan has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. Since it began it has spread throughout Taiwan and across to Chinese communities in North America and Southeast Asia, and in the past few years it has started to catch on in the mainland, where it is spreading like wildfire.

The early-winter sunlight breaks through the deep green of the ancient trees, spilling onto an ashen stone wall and over the statue of Confucius standing in the courtyard, as children's voices ring out in recitation of classical Chinese texts. This is the scene on a Saturday morning at the Confucian temple on Guozijian Street near Andingmen, Beijing. Just over 30 young children sit, decked out in vivid reds and deep yellows, following their teacher, reading aloud great works from China's history-works like The Great Learning, The Analects, and the Tao Te Ching-in a scene of tranquil cultural beauty. This group of preschoolers follow in the traditions of their Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasty predecessors as they are led on the path to becoming fine and upstanding citizens. The smiling faces of the children inside have brought this ancient temple, with its 700-year history, back to life.

And it's not just in Andingmen. All over the mainland, from Jiamusi and Mt. Shuangya at the Korean border in the north, to Xiamen and Hainan in the south, to Karamai and Urumqi in the west, similar classical studies classes have sprung up under the leadership of locals. The same is true for nearly 50 major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Kunming. And just in time to ride the rise of children's classical studies has come an influential video disk from Taiwan; it's estimated that over a million copies of the Children's Classical Studies Teaching Theory disk are in circulation around the mainland.

An influential disk

In 1994 Wang Tsai-kuei, a National Taichung Teachers College assistant professor and follower of Neo-Confucian scholar Mou Zongsan, developed a simple, easy-to-implement method to teach children classical texts. The idea was that through leading them in recitation in a relaxed, friendly environment, the children could be influenced gradually by the ideas of grace and integrity contained in some of the most valued works of Chinese literature and philosophy. In the ten years since, over 1 million children are estimated to have been steeped in these ancient works through Wang's method.

In 1997, Hong Kong's Buddhist studies master Nan Huaijin learned of Wang's efforts to promote children's cultural studies. Nan had been devoting himself to patching the cultural hole that had appeared in the Chinese community, and he wholeheartedly agreed with Wang's ideas. So he invited Wang to Hong Kong to hold a public seminar, and then, through Nan's own cultural and educational foundation, the two started promoting children's cultural studies in Hong Kong and on the mainland.

Working with Nan, Wang undertook a series of about ten lecture tours around the mainland. Each tour lasted about a month, and eventually he spanned the entire country, visiting over 200 places, giving seminars to thousands of elementary and kindergarten teachers, from whom he elicited a wonderful response.

Now the movement has spread into the places most optimal for its growth, cities like Wuhan, Beijing, and provinces such as Shandong. The majority of the first generation of children's classical studies promotional centers were inspired by watching Wang's video disk-the aforementioned Children's Classical Studies Teaching Theory-which introduces and explains the ideas behind children's classical studies. Feng Zhe, director of Beijing's Sihai Children's Classical Education Center, and his wife Feng Tao, are the best examples of the disk's influence.

Despite the large discrepancy between the quality of life in the cities and the rural areas, when it comes to classical studies, the rural children seem more focused and driven.

A life-changing lecture

After graduating from the mainland's Renmin University of China with a degree in economics, Feng Zhe, now 32, set up his own trading company, mainly selling computer software and children's picture books. At the same time, he also branched out into other businesses, opening clothing stores, hotpot restaurants, and bookstores. All his enterprises did impressive business, and he was the envy of all his peers. Then fate stepped in. A friend took him along to Hong Kong in 1999 to see Nan Huaijin. Nan had started out publishing his own works himself in an effort to enlighten people and promote culture, much like Feng Zhe was confident he himself was doing. But when Nan reprimanded him, saying what he was doing was a case of "the blind leading the blind," he was left deeply dejected.

Returning to Beijing, Feng tapped his network of friends and colleagues, and found out about a set of reference materials compiled by a group of professors who served as examiners for the university entrance exams. The set was sure to be a huge seller. In this set, he happened upon Wang Tsai-kuei's video disk. After listening to what Wang had to say, Feng threw out the metaphorical anchor on his career, realizing that he was doing no more than stoking the fire of the exam-oriented education system.

As a result, he tossed the massive stack of reference materials out to be recycled, and he immediately felt his heart lighten. His trading company was converted into a center for children's classical education, and his hotpot restaurant into a vegetarian one, as he and his wife began investing their hearts and souls into spreading the word of children's classical education.

Through such promotion, and by being given out by each and every classical education center, Wang's disk reached an ever-widening audience, its influence spreading like a ripple in a pond.

Now even the well-known editor of Trends magazine Wu Hong has become a devotee. Having happened upon the disk once, he realized that it could be a great influence on middle-class mothers, as well as tapping into the values of the time. So he dialled the phone number on the disk, getting in touch with Feng Zhe and getting permission for Trends' Shanghai and Beijing editions to carry copies of the disk on their covers-a total of 5000 discs.

With the days of culture being torn apart and "destruction of the four olds"in the past, can traditional texts give thisnew mainland generation a chance toreconnect with their culture?

We didn't start the fire...

Wang Tsai-kuei's children's classical studies concept and his easily implemented teaching method are setting the Chinese community alight worldwide. The biggest chain reaction being set off by it, though, is in the culturally disconnected mainland. And over the past two decades, the works of Neo-Confucian and Buddhist scholar Nan Huaijin have been developing into the catalyst allowing it all to happen.

Wang Jianwei, an active promoter of children's classical studies in Shanghai, really looks the part of a classical religious scholar with his beard. He notes that his generation, born in the late 60s, managed to narrowly miss the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. When a fad for cultural information overtook the mainland in the mid-80s, that generation were all seeking to quench their thirsts for knowledge at university. University students at the time immersed themselves in a Western-style "movement to emancipate the mind," with a great number diving into the Western classics. However, in 1989 the movement was brought to a screeching halt by the ruling cadre after the Tiananmen massacre.

With Western schools of thought outlawed, Nan Huaijin's works were the perfect filler for the gap they left. "At that time it seemed as though every single university student had a couple of Master Nan's works on the bookshelves," says Wang Jianwei. That generation of students are now mothers and fathers, and they generally favor traditional culture. This has made them the driving force behind the children's classical education movement. Included amongst their numbers is the most evidently effective promoter of the movement, director of the Wuhan Dafang Cultural Education Institute, former exchange student to France, and dedicated follower of Nan Huaijin, Professor Yu Yiyan.

In the Huashan lecture hall in Taipei County, a group of children surrounds Wang Tsai-kuei, telling him about their progress in their classical studies. Wang, who has promoted children's classical studies in Taiwan for 10 years with great success, has spent recent years spreading the word through seminars throughout the mainland, America, and Southeast Asia.

Town and country

Those dozen or so promotional tours of the mainland included more people than just Wang Tsai-kuei. Nan Huaijin's own student Li Chen-wu and her daughter Kuo Heng-yan were also part of the troupe. Kuo has been a follower of Nan Huaijin since her youth, when she would go along with her mother to see him. She was also the recipient of a scholarship to study at New York University and holds a master's degree in education. Soon after graduation, she left her high-paying bank job to join the children's classical studies movement.

Lugging around a bundle of textbooks, Li and her daughter traveled the length and breadth of the mainland by train.

"In mainland China, with all its economic turmoil, we found that the more well-off the city, the more traditional culture was looked down upon, when we were expecting otherwise," Kuo explains. As it happened, their visits to the rural towns and villages buoyed their hopes immensely, just as Nan himself had told them: "The classical studies movement must grow outward from the towns and the villages and then spread its influence to the cities. Only the rural people will really understand the value of the opportunity being presented to them."

Meanwhile the assistant secretary-general of the Chinese Youth Development Fund (CYDF), Xu Yongguang, also paid a visit to Nan in Hong Kong. The CYDF is most famous for "Project Hope," which gave poor rural children a shot at education, and once Xu heard Nan's ideas on classical education, he put into action a successor project for classical studies based around ancient poetry and classical texts. In 1998 the new project went nationwide, taking as its focus the desire to create "upstanding youth through study of the ancient texts." Originally the goal was to put 1 million children through the study scheme in ten years, but things grew much faster than anticipated. By the CYDF's estimates they have already had over 5 million children throughout the mainland study morals and ethics by way of the classical texts. Amongst those numbers they count students at 409 elementary schools in the city of Lianjiang in Guangdong Province, contributing 40,000 students to the project's ranks.

Rural parents, shipping sack after sack of locally-grown apples and pears in their cars, thank Feng Tao for bringing classical studies books, CDs, and other information from faraway Beijing.

Classical wisdom for modern life

The children's classical studies movement has hit the mainland like a tidal wave, surging across the entire nation. Its advocates aren't just the elders, the generation who themselves were educated in the classics. It also includes those who came of age during the Cultural Revolution and the "destruction of the four olds" (old ideas, old habits, old cultures, and old customs) and who also long deep down to reconnect with tradition.

"Having had our once strongly-held beliefs and ideals shattered, those of us who lived through that time of extreme leftist politics can often end up feeling cold and detached. However, being so detached has just strengthened our hope that our children don't end up the same way, that virtue and goodness can live on through them," opines Zhou Hong, a tireless advocate of "common-sense education". He says that for society to pull itself back up, what it needs is to once again follow the path of the sages-the path of compassion, morality, loyalty, and forgiveness.

In fact, placing study of the classics into a framework of everyday practice does more than just acquaint the children with traditional virtues and values. Much to the amazement of their parents, through their studies the children absorb the information in the books, and apply it almost effortlessly in their everyday lives. Li Zhongmei, mother of a child studying in her first year in the classes at Andingmen, discovered this for herself recently. When one of her nephews wasn't willing to study, her daughter, not yet four years old, reasoned with him by quoting one of the classics she had studied. Quoting from the Three-Character Classic she said him in her tender, childlike voice: "If the child does not study, it is improper. If he does not study while young, how will he act when old?" Another time, on seeing an old man come aboard a bus, the once timid girl unexpectedly stood and offered the old man her seat, saying: "If an elder is standing, a child may not sit."

The children, having been immersed in the classics, have them committed to memory like the wise men of old. Thanks to the general aura of the classics, and of having them memorized, the children generally become more modest and polite and find it much easier to change any bad habits they may have. "The ancients said, 'knowledge of the Books brings propriety,' and the books they were talking about are these very classics," says Li Zhongmei knowingly.

Taipei-based teacher Liu Kuei-kuang, who has taught classical studies for nearly ten years, notes that materials for teaching classical studies at present focus on the traditional basis of Confucianism, the "Four Books and Five Classics," and the Taoist texts of Laozi and Zhuangzi. Confucianism teaches that intellectuals should devote themselves to the management of society and state, while Taoism teaches that one should step back from the affairs of man and enter into contemplation. Between them, the two cover the different aspects of wisdom needed for life. If children are exposed to this wisdom while they are still relatively clean slates, it can give them a complete, balanced understanding, and give them a broader view of things.

Popularizing classical studies

Knowing the true benefits that learning the wisdom of the ancient philosophers can have for their children has cemented the belief of advocates for children's classical studies. On deeper inspection of the situation, however, there are still some barriers to the idea that have yet to be broken.

Figures of 5 million children being educated in the classics may seem impressive, but it's barely a drop in the ocean when you take into account the total number of children in the mainland of elementary school age and younger. And in the case of those children in the cities studying the classics, it's all tied in with trendiness-the children study because it's trendy to, and several institutions are getting into classical studies because there's money to be made, rather than for idealistic purposes.

Located in Beijing's Haidian District is Cuiwei Kindergarten, a reasonably priced sort of school. There, even 18-month-old toddlers gurgle along with the teacher as he reads aloud from classical works. Looking at them carrying their cute little backpacks and their Ultraman toys, it's clear to see they are the apples of their parents' eyes. Two years ago, Principal Chen Xiurong started to think about how the "one-child policy" generation of children were particularly unsociable and spoilt, and so she started getting the children on to classical studies.

After the first year of offering classical studies, the kindergarten's enrolments increased 100%. Everyone expected the focus on the traditional tomes would bring scorn, but it has actually turned out to be a major draw-card for new enrolments.

Classical studies in kindergartens has become more fashionable, but in the mainland the educational environment is fiercely competitive. Even getting into a good elementary school entails being tested and paying bribes under the table, so the pressure to advance is felt right down to the toddlers graduating from these kindergartens, and it can impinge seriously on their classical studies time.

"My kid is about to move on to elementary school. English, math, Chinese chess, piano... there's a lot to learn. I've given it a lot of thought, and I'm not sure if we'll be able to fit in classical studies any more," says one mother, torn between love for her child and vexation over her options. Clearly, many parents see classical studies could be seen as a kind of elective class or just as a way to strengthen their child's memory.

"There are a lot of temptations, and the atmosphere is very tense. At first I signed my little one up for all sorts of classes, but I can't help thinking, do high marks really mean someone is more capable? Do high achievers at school necessarily lead long and healthy lives?" recollects another mother. Everyone agrees that children need the best start to life they can get, but she feels that the best start is really a more spiritual one, giving her child a strong foundation of morals and values, and an understanding of how to strive for his life goals and direction. This is much more important than the shortsighted focus on immediate benefits that has so much currency in child-rearing today, so she encourages other parents not to be carried away by trends and to focus on what is most important and valuable.

Passing the torch

To parents who are stuck in the modern education system, children's classical studies seems to stand in direct opposition to the idea of a practical Western education and to the advancement-centered mindset.

"Since the reform and liberalization of the country, there's been a huge focus on scientific and economic development, on the premise that we need to improve our quality of life. However, it is all done simply with an eye toward the acquisition of material goods. Rather than improving it, this is actually diverging further from true quality of life. Children's classical education is a way to get our children back on the right track," notes Beijing Normal University professor Guo Qijia.

Two years ago, director Feng Zhe of Beijing's Sihai Center and a group of friends spent an afternoon climbing Xi'an's Mt. Zhongnan, famous in the classical works as a retreat for sages. On the mountain, they stumbled across a Shaolin master with a dozen or so children from the area, all studying martial arts and taking classical studies.

The modern-day mainland has been through a tumultuous hundred years, from the first focus on studying the West, through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, through to the economic development and feverish pursuit of the English language of today. Now, having drifted across the strait from Taiwan, the seeds of a return to traditional culture are taking root there.