Minor in Chinese Language and Culture (for International Students*)

(*including Non-Chinese Speaking local students)

Administrative host: Faculty of Humanities
Contributing units: Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Department of Chinese History and Culture, Chinese Language Centre and Confucius Institute of Hong Kong

Programme aims:
This programme is a custom-design minor aims to meet the needs of non-Chinese speaking students who aspire to learn about Chinese language and culture while pursuing a degree in PolyU. It is offered in answer to the growing interest of university students in China studies following the country’s rapid economic growth in recent decades. Having a better understanding of a modernising Chinese society through the learning of its language and culture has become an important asset for many university students around the world.

Culture is the collective experience of a society. Every society has its own “cultural themes”, which have a substantial impact on how people in that society behave and react to their surroundings. Chinese cultural themes are rooted in folk belief and Confucian values, such as filial piety, thrift, endurance, and trustworthiness. These values are deeply engrained in the Chinese psyche and underlie social behaviour, decision making, and developmental pattern of many aspects of modern China. Understanding the Chinese Culture is therefore crucial for anyone who aspires to know more about China, and cross-cultural knowledge has become a core competence that would help to sharpen the competitive edge of young people nowadays.

Alongside the study of Chinese culture, the learning of Chinese language is of equal, if not more, importance for a good start in understanding China. The Chinese language, as a carrier and constituent of Chinese culture, is an indispensable component of any China-related programme. A good mastery of the Chinese language would facilitate communication with the Chinese people in a lot of different situations. For example, it is commonly understood that communication in the Chinese culture is very subtle and indirect. Some westerners may not know that the term “no” is seldom used in a lot of business encounters in China. Expressions like “maybe”, “we shall see” and “we shall study it” are used instead, as the Chinese equivalent of “no”. Failure to understand communication features, such as the one listed in the above example, often results in communication failure that can jeopardize mutual relationship and perhaps business objective.

The study of Chinese language will not only enable the students to access abundant resources compiled in Chinese, they will also be able to understand more thoroughly many other values and cultural phenomena embedded in the Chinese language.

This minor programme will therefore aim at offering a well-balanced curriculum that puts equal emphasis on Chinese language and culture, and subject contents delivered in a linguistically and culturally rich Chinese environment, it is expected that international students could benefit from this programme on their way to better understand China. The introduction of such programme could also support the University’s endeavour for internationalisation.

 

Curriculum (For students joining the programme from 2016/17 onwards):