Having an opportunity to interview Prof. Chen Yuehong really made one both excited and nervous, as we all thought it would be a quite academic and rigorous task to talk to a professor from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Peking University (PKU). However, when the interviewer met with Prof. Chen in Beijing, he appeared to be an amiable “uncle” with high spirits. A few words with him will actually expand your horizon. This is Chen Yuehong, who just took office as the Director of the Humanities Center of SUSTech.

Prof. Chen Yuehong was the former Dean of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of PKU. At PKU he has also held previous positions as member of the School Administration Committee, convener of the Strategic Panel on Undergraduate Education Reform, Deputy Director of the Center for Cross-cultural Studies and Deputy Director of the Institute of Chinese Poetry. He has successively been a short-term chair professor at the University of Macau, an exchange professor at Chungnam National University of ROK, a chair professor at Shih Chien University of Taiwan and a visiting scholar at the University of Hong Kong and Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is the Vice President of the China Comparative Literature Association and the China Comparative Literature Teaching Research Association, one of the two chief editors of bilingual journal (Chinese and English) Comparative Literature & World Literature, a recipient of State Council Special Allowance since 2015 and the chief expert in the “National Chinese Ability Research and Testing System Classification Construction” project, which is a national major project of social science in 2015.

For Prof. Chen, the foremost question from our interviewer was: as a Vice Dean and Dean of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at PKU, a prominent institute of humanities education, for over a decade, why he chose SUSTech?

The Choice: Top-Notch Science and Engineering University Must Provide Top-Notch Humanities Education

In July 2016, the interviewer attended the SUSTech freshmen symposium in Beijing and witnessed Chen Yuehong’s interaction with the freshmen of SUSTech. He said that “during my career as Vice Dean and Dean of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of PKU, I was engaged in enrollment, undergraduate education reform and university development planning for a long time and deeply involved in China’s higher education reform. These experiences made me realize that China’s higher education is transforming from a quantity-oriented and relatively closed system to a quality-oriented and globalized system.”

According to Prof. Chen, higher education institutions in China are influenced by traditional Chinese academies, modern Western higher education practices, Soviet higher education system and market economy. The four-fold influence poses a heavy burden for our higher education reform, while academia expects swift reform. In this regard, SUSTech is an ideal platform for breakthroughs and innovative reform, as it is located in Shenzhen, the leading-edge in reform and opening up, and is supported by the state in higher education reform pilot projects. “That’s the most important motivation for me to choose SUSTech,” says Prof. Chen, “because we wish to strengthen the ‘2+2 mode’ in liberal education, to achieve interdisciplinary education, to transform from a teacher-centered system to a student-centered one…Under the circumstances that any step of reform in other institutions is so difficult, SUSTech offers us an opportunity to apply reforms like the ‘631 mode’ in enrollment and the ‘2+2 mode’ in liberal education, which are really inspiring achievements. SUSTech is burden-free, just like a ‘blank sheet’. It would be much easier to achieve international higher education, specialized liberal education and highlight goals like interdisciplinary education and innovation and entrepreneurship education here.”

However, SUSTech still faces an important problem in promoting modern talent training: the balance between specialized education and humanities education. “Top-notch science and engineering university must provide top-notch humanities education as a prerequisite of cultivating innovative talents.” But what is the way to provide quality humanities education in a top-notch university of science and engineering? Actually, it is a completely new issue for the whole higher educational circles in China. “Since the reform and opening up, science and engineering universities in China have tried in various ways, but the integration of humanities and science and engineering remain unsolved. Providing top-notch humanities education in a top-notch university of science and engineering, it is a challenge. At SUSTech, I feel free to try everything. One of my vision for the future is to offer the best humanities education for science and engineering students and seek an ideal way of discipline development and a scientific route of course education.” Says Chen Yuehong.“First we will gradually introduce domestic researchers and teachers in humanities to SUSTech to provide best humanities education for the 8,000 future students of SUSTech. This notion really excites me. Therefore I chose to be here with SUSTech.”

The Plan: Do Our Best to Offer Best Humanities Teaching

It seems that Professor Chen Yuehong has made some preparations before he came to SUSTech. “We should break the pattern of separating literature, history, and philosophy in ordinary colleges of liberal arts and schools of humanities of China’s comprehensive universities. In SUSTech, we want to set up teaching and research workshops instead of school of humanities. We plan to set up four workshops for research, teaching and practices to integrate all of our teaching and research work comprehensively.” Mr. Chen began to talk about his idea in depth.

“The first is the Workshop of In-Depth Reading and Modern Interpretation of Classics. On one hand, the workshop offers courses for in-depth reading and understanding of Chinese and foreign classics, on the other hand, it offers courses on classics of China and abroad on the basis of relative humanities researches. The courses cover not only China’s classics such as The Four Books and The Five Classics and Tang and Song poems but also western classics about Aristotle and Hegel. We ask students to read and learn representative classics intensively in their four-years study in order to get the credits.”

“The second is the Workshop of Humanities Methodology and Critical Thinking. We will offer relative methodology courses on humanities which dabble in intellectual history, history of academic studies, history of discipline and history of major. Take the Chinese ideological history for example, it covers not only literature, history, and philosophy, but also other social sciences and the Chinese culture as a whole. History of academic studies mainly refers to history of humanities of China and foreign countries, and history of discipline focuses on concrete disciplines. The construction of methodology is also important, for it can teach you critical and logical thinking on doing researches. With basic knowledge of history of academic studies, history of discipline and methodology, you will review academic development in a critical manner and think how to innovate in the future.”

“The third is the Workshop of Instruction and Promotion on Research Writing. Why research writing? In teaching practices of undergraduates and postgraduates, we found that students are not good at Chinese writing, and many of them have problems in style, narration, and telling elegance from vulgarity. Even in the first-class domestic universities, there are quite a few students who show their poor stylistic awareness, writing logic and ability of expression when writing e-mails. experiment reports, project designs, graduation theses, etc. As a result, they failed to express and explain their good researches, although they are excellent. Most of world-class universities have research writing courses or instruction centers, so we have a Workshop of Instruction and Promotion on Research Writing mainly to offer Chinese research writing instructions and help enhance students’ writing ability. In the future, courses will be available to introduce academic norms, writing standards, research specifications and instructions. We hope our students can write both good English and Chinese when they graduate from SUSTech.”

“The fourth is the Workshop of Multimedia and Interdisciplinary Studies. The workshop will offer different cross-border courses of humanities which include art design, architectural design, modern media research, and youth subculture research, and these courses will be available for students of different majors. So, no matter what you major in, you should finish relative courses systematically and obtain enough credits within 4 years.”

Prof. Chen said he hopes to build Humanities Center into a public space for interaction between teachers and students. Teacher’s Office should be small and public space should be large, so that students can feel at home. He said, “If you are tired of staying in the dormitory, you can go to Humanities Center to drink coffee with teachers and read, talk, imagine, even play mud, build models and make designs to your hearts’ content.” Students can register for teachers’ projects or turn teachers’ ideas into research-oriented courses. The building of Humanities Center is expected to be completed in 2018, and Chen Yuehong’s goal is to build it into a warm “home for academic studies of humanities” in which students can relax and make progress.

Humanities Center aims to cultivate SUSTech students into both international and local talents who will integrate world-class practices and academic ability with Chinese culture.

The Construction of Campus Culture: To Create Space and Atmosphere for Campus Culture

Speaking of the construction of campus culture, Prof. Chen said: “As for the construction of campus culture, Humanities Center should better play the role of advisor and monitor.” There are at least two problems to be solved when it comes to universities of South China. The first is the hot, wet and rainy weather, which requires constructing interconnected winding corridor that connects student dormitories, classrooms, laboratories, cafeteria, supermarkets, the library and offices. The second is the necessity to create a suitable environment — public space — for communication, enabling the students to initiate activities naturally.

Prof. Chen also said that the most important thing in the construction of campus culture is creating good humanistic atmosphere by organizing various activities from time to time, including holding reading salons, organizing screenwriting contests, multimedia contests and music contests, running creative workshops, initiating creative practice programs, etc. Through interactions of these kinds, the “barriers” among students and majors can be broken, which may turn students into new communities to make innovations, open up new vistas and develop the campus into the “home” of culture and the hearts of students.

The Internet: Watch Not Only Hollywood Movies but also Popular TV Dramas

What should Humanities Center do to deal with the impact of the Internet on students?

“We shouldn’t take the Internet as the opposite of study and success. The key to the problem is to treat and make use of the Internet correctly. SUSTech and its teachers should not guide students in a dominant position, but take the initiative to enter their world and treat them equally. Our humanistic education should enter the world of Internet that students live in. The Internet itself is both virtual and real, where humanistic education carries more weight. Cyberspace relates to students’ sense of survival, sense of time and concept of value, so more efforts should be put in studying the subculture of Internet youths and offer relevant courses to help them develop healthy lifestyle and enable them to pursue knowledge and learn skills.” 

Prof. Chen also commented that studying the subculture of Internet youths may help create conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship for students. People now look at the Internet defensively, taking it as non-mainstream culture from the perspective of adults. “It is important to recognize that although 90% of online novels are trash-talking, it doesn’t mean that the rest 5% or 10% are not worth reading. It is better to discuss about them and promote reading good novels rather than criticizing them blindly. We need reading to enhance our taste. Popular culture is also part of our lives. Similarly, we watch not only Hollywood movies but also popular TV dramas. As noble and elegant as a scholar is, once he is immersed in the plots and narrative logic of Zhen Huan, a popular TV drama in China, he would be led by the plots of the drama. As a Chinese, you hope a perfect instead of tragic ending, then what are the reasons behind this kind of psychology and aesthetic habits? The complex cultural psychology and aesthetic values should be probed into.”

Expectation: SUSTech Will Be Your “Best Choice”

Prof. Chen Yuehong shared these ideas to the freshmen-to-be. He hopes that students don’t receive knowledge passively, but participate in the construction of SUSTech and its humanities as the owner of the campus. “Anyone needs to have his spiritual home, otherwise he could not stay in pure physical world for long and would want to escape from the campus. However, the spiritual home is not given by others but created by students themselves. The best way to overcome loneliness and sense of loss is to actively walk out of them and build a spiritual home with other students. We have the obligation and responsibility for building our own spiritual home in the near future.”

Talking about the future, Chen said: “I hope that in ten years, SUSTech will become the best choice of university candidates in China in terms of innovation, internationalization and cultural subjectivity. We have the obligation and responsibility to achieve this goal.”