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Teacher brings history to life at ancient academy
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A teacher popular with students who became an Internet hit, then a television star, brought his lively style of instruction recently to the restored 515-year-old Wansong Academy in Hangzhou.
Yuan Tengfei, 41, known as the “most amazing history teacher,” insists he only “explains history in simple words.” His teaching style is often compared to a standup comedian’s delivery, using humor and logic. He says his goal is to arouse people’s interest in historical culture.
It is the third time that Yuan has given a lecture at Wansong. Founded in 1498 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the academy was one of the four major academies in Hangzhou. It now gives free lessons to the public, mostly about Chinese traditional culture.
“I am on the honorary staff of the Wansong Academy,” Yuan jokes. “Hangzhou is adorable, especially because it served as the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). It was a period of prosperity for China.”
Yuan gave a two-hour lecture about how ancient Chinese governments picked officials, an appropriate topic since Wansong Academy was once a place to teach students to take the imperial examination (in Chinese, ke ju), like today’s civil service examination.
He started the lecture with a traditional saying: “Spilled water cannot be gathered up again.”
Yuan said that Zhu Maichen, a great yet very poor scholar in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), was discarded by his wife because he wasn’t wealthy. However, years later, his reputation for great knowledge was heard by the emperor through others’ recommendations, and suddenly he was made a senior local governor.
“‘So he was a blue chip, and I thought he was a junk bond,’ his ex-wife thought, and went back to Zhu, crying ‘I was trying to motivate you, I was kidding, and see? Now you are successful, so can we remarry?’ the woman asked.”
Now Yuan reached the punch line. “Zhu poured a basin of water on the earth and said, ‘Not unless you can gather up the spilled water,’ and left.”
The vivid details of the story were typical of how Yuan teaches — in this case showing how the ancient Chinese picked the best and the brightest not only through the right of hereditary rule and examinations, but also through recommendations.
Yuan formerly taught high school and now teaches at Beijing Haidian School for Teachers’ Advanced Studies and is on the panel compiling history textbooks for high schools.
In 2008, his students uploaded his lesson videos and they accumulated millions of clicks. He was invited to Lecture Room, a teaching TV program run by CCTV 10, where he became a star. While the program invites mostly professors and researchers, Yuan and another history teacher were exceptions.
He has published 16 books, including four series and three individual books about history or how to study history.
He usually dictates his books, as he did with his first series, “What Hell History Is,” and his latest series, “Three Dynasties North to the Great Wall.” Similarly, he does not prepare written drafts for lessons.
Among all Chinese dynasties, Yuan says he likes the Song (960-1279) best as he believes that “the economy and cultural development reached a peak during the Song Dynasty and declined after that.”
Hangzhou, he says, “should play the ‘Southern Song Dynasty’ card well,” since it was the capital.
Yuan notes that the annual revenue produced by the Northern Song (960-1127) was at least 160 million liang (a unit of weight) of silver, and in the Southern Song (when the country’s area was cut in half), the revenue was at least 100 million liang. It was the highest number in ancient Chinese history, and during the following Ming Dynasty, revenue remained at about 15 million liang.
Yuan believes that to revive Chinese civilization and culture, the country should learn more from the Song Dynasty, which was “liberal and free.”
Though the government was rich, the Song Dynasty court was frugal: one emperor liked to grant his ministers half of a reward, like half of a pair of trousers or “half” a horse — so the minister could benefit only if he won a reward twice. Hangzhou in the Southern Song period, then named Lin’an, had a population of 1.2 million, compared with only 20,000 residents in London and 40,000 in Paris at the time.
In the Internet age, learning history is as easy as typing words into a search engine and clicking “enter,” but Yuan says a history teacher can give people the “details, stories and interests” they may not get otherwise.
“The Internet is like a dictionary, and few people go through a dictionary to find interesting things. So what history teachers should do is to arouse people’s interest in going through a dictionary,” he says.
Yuan also worries about the continuation of authentic Chinese civilization.
He gave a true example: Once he gave several German exchange students a two-hour lesson about Peking Opera. But when one German student asked one of his high school students, “How often do you watch Peking Opera?” the boy asked, “What is Peking Opera?”
“I felt I was going to spit blood out of my mouth,” recalls Yuan.
“Chinese people have to fix the cultural discontinuity as soon as possible,” Yuan said during his lecture. “We Chinese people cannot be proud of cheap, small commodities that are ‘Made in China,’ or a modern military, but we can be proud of our culture.
“China doesn’t die as long as Chinese culture exists,” he says, suggesting that foreigners “tour China more so as to experience real Chinese culture and lifestyle.”
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