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The
Hebrew Studies Program at Peking University, Beijing, China ¡¡ Points East Vol. 22 No. 1 (July, 2007), pp. 1-6 ¡¡
The political atmosphere in the 1980s, when China had no official diplomatic relationship with Israel, was not as open as today. The Chinese knew little about the outside world. Due to the limited and sometimes misleading information provided by the government run media, most Chinese believed that the State of Israel was a ¡°menial jackal¡± of the ¡°American imperialists¡± and a sinister invader in the Middle East. The first Hebrew class was established for national security reasons. The initial number of students was eight. When the first class began, there was little fanfare. Instead, it was said that some security guards were stationed outside the classroom to deal with potential threat. ¡°I could only read written modern Hebrew in books and newspapers,¡± says Ms. Zheping Xu, who goes by the Hebrew name Shula, ¡°but had no experience on how to communicate with Israelis in daily spoken Hebrew.¡± She was among the handful of Hebrew students trained by Mr. Xiangqun Xu in the late 70s and early 80s. Mr. Xu is a self-made Hebrew scholar, who started to self-study Hebrew in the early 60s at the request of a former state leader for national security purpose. He was a graduate from the Oriental Studies department at PKU as a student of the Arabic language in the late 50s. Mr. Xu spent almost half a century studying Modern Hebrew using newspapers and books collected from Israel. His life long study culminated with a Modern Hebrew grammar written in the Chinese language from scratch, based on thousands of index cards he made during the passed 50 years. It was published by PKU Press in 2005. Lack of experienced instructors did not efface the keen interest of the first eight Hebrew students at PKU. The authorities at PKU invited guest instructors from the United States to help Ms. Xu with the teaching of spoken Hebrew. Some of the instructors were scholars in biblical Hebrew, with limited experience in modern spoken Hebrew while visiting Israel. The first Hebrew class of eight students graduated in 1990. In 1991, preparation for formal diplomatic relationship between China and Israel were underway. The foreign ministry of Israel and its counter part in China reached an agreement to support a Chinese university to train a class of Modern Hebrew students to facilitate further cultural and diplomatic exchange between the two countries. An U.S. based Jewish foundation was to provide financial assistance so that the class can have experienced modern Hebrew instructors hired directly from Israel getting paid a comparable salary as their Israeli colleagues working in Israel. Due to PKU¡¯s experience with the first Hebrew class in China, the Ministry of Education in China turned to it to fulfill this initiative. Since 1991, four more classes were admitted every four years one after another (1991, 1995, 1999 and 2003), with the first one in 1991 grouped hastily from students already entered the University in 1990 to other language programs and the Law school. Since 1991, more than a handful of instructors from Israel or the U.S. have taught in this program; at any moment, there was at least one native speaker teaching the students. Most of these instructors have had Ulpan teaching experience in Israel, while some of them are also faculty members in Israeli universities, holding post graduate degrees in fields such as Hebrew linguistics, literature and education. They successfully exported the crucial teaching method in the Ulpans to China ¡ª ¡°teaching Hebrew only by Hebrew¡± from the very beginning of their first classes. Some of them even prohibited the students from speaking English or Chinese in classes. Although many students suffered during the first few weeks, they soon got used to this method and made rapid progress. After one year of learning the language intensively ¨C 12 hours or more classes a week, the Hebrew majors were able to converse freely with Israelis. When the Israel embassy opened in Beijing in 1992, it got involved with the class¡¯s academic development with a more hands on attitude. Textbooks were shipped from Israel to the embassy and then distributed to the students. The students were invited to Passover and Independence Day celebrations organized by the embassy. These students were also frequent audience for visiting Israel art performances and concerts in Beijing. All the Israel ambassadors visited the class; prominent guests with Jewish background from all over the world frequent PKU campus to talk to the students, among them, Shimon Peres. The faculty team of the Hebrew program has grown larger, albeit slowly, during the last decade. Starting from 1991, Mr. Ping Zhang, a Master Degree holder who studied Hebrew with the first class, began to serve as the counseling teacher of class 1991. He went to Israel in 1993 and earned his Ph.D. in comparative culture studies (Confucianism and Talmudic Studies) in 2000. He is now an Israeli permanent resident and a tenured professor in Tel Aviv University. In 1993, Ms. Xu, the first Hebrew teacher on a university campus in China, earned her Masters degree in Modern Hebrew linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ms. Yu Wang, a graduate of the class of 1990, became the third Chinese faculty member in the program in 1995. She received her Master's degree in Jewish Culture from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is working towards her Ph.D. degree on Modern Israel politics from Haifa University. In 2003, another member of the class of 1990, Dr. Yiyi Chen, joined force with his former teacher and classmate. He was trained in Near Eastern Studies and the Hebrew Bible at Cornell University, and had spent several years working in the U.S. before returning to China. The Hebrew Studies major at PKU has been the only one in China for over twenty years; this means in a country with a population of 1.3 billion, only 9-12 students at any given time are learning Modern Hebrew on a university campus. These students appreciate this privilege and put enormous amount of effort in their study. They can typically reach or pass Level Vav (the highest level in Ulpan) in Modern Hebrew by the time of their graduation. Tal Devir, a correspondent of Yediot Aharonot in Beijing, sat in and interviewed the class for two months and wrote a long report on a July 2002 issue of the newspaper, in which he reluctantly admitted: ¡°When talking with these students who have studied Hebrew for only two years in Beijing, I am really jealous. I have been in China and studied the language for many years but I don¡¯t dare speak Chinese with them, for their Hebrew is much better than my Chinese (translated from Hebrew by Zhenhua Meng).¡± The faculty and students in this program at PKU also helped the Chinese public gain more accurate and objective information about Israel and the Jewish People. For example, in 2001, Zhenhua Meng, a sophomore student of the fourth class at that time, set up a website to provide information on Israel and the Jewish People to the Chinese audience. This website soon became popular and the affiliated online forum hosted a number of heated discussions about Israel. One year later, Mr. Meng was sent as an exchange student to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, from where he wrote columns for two Chinese newspapers to share his unforgettable experience and thoughts from a Chinese point of view. Many of the graduates maintain web logs in which they write about Israel and the Jewish culture, these have attracted many readers who are interested in the subject. As of February, 2007, there have been 33 graduates from the Hebrew program in PKU; nine more are due to graduate in the summer of 2007. Besides two became faculty members in the Hebrew program at PKU, others are working for Chinese Academy of Social Sciences ¨C the think-tank for the central government, Shanghai International Studies University, Center of Jewish Studies in Shanghai, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem Bureau, Xin Hua News Agency and the Israeli embassy in Beijing. Some are employed by Israeli and Chinese companies such as El Al and the Chinese Tourism Group; others are pursuing their graduate degree in areas related to the Jewish culture in the U.S., England and Hong Kong, China. Besides training students in the Hebrew studies major, it also offers courses to the whole student body of PKU. These classes provided many of the most brilliant young people in China a more comprehensive and balanced perspective on Israel and the Jewish culture. These scholars are also active participants in academic exchanges and cooperation with other colleagues in China, these activities in turn have influenced many of the intellectuals¡¯ thinking on issues Middle East, Jewish, and Israeli. The history of the Hebrew program at PKU overlaps with China¡¯s tremendous economic revival and development during the last two decades. Starting from the second class of the program, it enjoyed strong support from both a Jewish foundation and the Israeli embassy, especially when compared with the relatively limited resources Chinese universities had back in the early 90s. This generous support not only made literature about Israel and the Jewish People abundant to the students, but also allowed short and long term visits by them to the State of Israel, as well as inviting experienced instructors from Israel to teach. However, due to various reasons, this support has diminished along the years, and now there is no support whatsoever to this program coming from any source outside the university. Although China¡¯s own governmental support can make up some of the deficit in the operation, it is far from enough in order to keep the former legendary quality of language instruction of the program. Today, more universities in China have recently started or are planning to offer Hebrew and Jewish Studies programs. At this juncture, the diminishment of external funding is a double-edged sword. On one hand, as stated above, due to the lack of funding to attract top-grade language instructors to teach, the students¡¯ spoken Hebrew skill will suffer, the same will be with their reading material and trips to Israel; on the other hand, the program at PKU sees this also as an opportunity to transition from a mere language teaching program to one that focuses more on original research. With the increase of international trade and traveling, the general interest of the Chinese to learn about the Middle East region has also grown dramatically. At PKU, there are many faculties who are working in related fields (Palestinian-Israeli relationship in the International Studies College, Middle Eastern political systems in the Political Science Department, Islamism, Christianity and Judaism comparative studies in the Philosophy and Religion Studies Department, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the Oriental Studies Department). The faculties in the Hebrew program will work more closely with these colleagues. The collective strength of all these scholars working together will definitely produce some fresh view point for the students in the best university of China. The current Hebrew students have already felt the difference ¨C they used to be overly influenced by the Jewish point of view, now, partly due to decreased hours of instruction by Israeli teachers and much fewer literature sent from Israel, they have more time to take up other courses representing different or even opposing views, as well as read much diversified literatures about Israel. Today, they tend to put Israel in a larger Middle East cultural and political context. After almost 22 years, the Hebrew and Jewish Studies program at PKU is transforming itself again, propelled by both internal and external forces, to reposition itself to the high need of China¡¯s new development and its relationship with the international community, especially the Middle East. It has trained dozens of Hebrew students, and has influenced thousands more who have studied on the same campus. It will continue to do so with its new effort to focus on original and objective research, hopefully this new initiative will get its much needed support from all sources around the world.
Appendix II:
Classes offered by the Hebrew Studies Program faculties to the whole university
student body:Introduction to the Hebrew Bible; Appendix III: Other online resources about the class and their activities: ¡°Approaching Israel¡± website address: http://www.israelcn.com; ¡°Student's goal is Chinese translation of Hebrew Bible,¡± an online version of an article featuring Dr. Yiyi Chen: http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/96/11.21.96/Bible_translation.html Ping Zhang¡¯s blog
of: http://blog.daqi.com/zhangp ¡¡ |