Classics in China: A Student Initiative
Should students have to know English to Learn Latin? Using We Chat to make learning Latin easier and more convenient for Chinese students
After being accepted into Culver Academies, a boarding high school in Indiana, US, in the spring of 2018, right after I turned 15, I made a small decision that I would never have thought to be such impactful — I signed up for Latin class. As a Chinese girl who had never studied in an English environment, least in the US, I was anxious about the school starting. Thus, during the remainder of spring and summer that follows, I tried to preview course materials to prepare myself for classes.
Trying to teach myself Latin was a challenge. Even trying to find materials in China to teach myself Latin was a challenge. Ironically, I lived in Shanghai, one of the most diverse cities in China, where not only was English mandatory since kindergarten, but numerous institutes tutored “second foreign languages” ranging from Spanish and French to Russian and Korean. Unfortunately, Latin was not among them. So, to try to learn Latin, I had to connect to a foreign VPN and to go on YouTube (banned in China mainland), where I struggled to “teach” myself my third language with my second language that I was not yet proficient in. Trust me, it was even more confusing than it sounds.
Miraculously, LatinTutorial videos and some random textbooks that pooped up in Google searches helped me to test out of Culver’s Latin 1 class and into the Latin 2 class in the coming fall. Finally, a well-structured Latin class saved me from the confusion. Although I did struggle at the beginning of the school year, because of both English and Latin, I managed to catch up with the class fairly quickly. At the end of the semester, I signed up for Latin 3. By then, neither English nor Latin seemed like an obstacle to me, and at the beginning of my sophomore year at Culver, I found myself as the only non-senior in the AP Latin Class.
My experience in learning Latin was a unique one. I had found trying to teach myself Latin tedious, and I did not enjoy learning the language and the culture as I did later in class. Nonetheless, I appreciate that experience as it gave me the essential skill to hold myself accountable in a challenging long-term task. Yet reflecting on my struggles that summer, I wished that I could have learned Latin more easily.
During the summer before my junior year, I had the opportunity to meet my peers from different schools all over the world whom all shared with me the same passion for Latin and Classics. I became friend with Zhonggou (Marie) Wei, a rising senior in Worcester Academy, MA. Originally from Shenzhen, China, she founded a Latin platform through WeChat, China’s largest social media. She had been running the WeChat official account “Lingua Latina”, writing about beginner Latin grammar, and answering questions that followers might have. I soon joined her in managing this account. Given that I had just finished the AP course, I began writing on “Lingua Latina” about the AP Latin content and Roman culture that I had learned before. To date, I have published a three-article series summarizing the entire twelve books of the Aeneid in Chinese and interpreting important scenes and symbols. I also wrote on Roman education, family structures, and the roles of women in the late Republic periods as a part of the Roman culture series. Within few months, our account has grown from roughly 1000 followers to 1600.
Our followers are primarily Chinese students interested in Humanities and History from high schools and universities, as well as some adults. Given that the majority of our followers do not have much previous experience in Classics, least Latin, I try to introduce them to ancient culture and literature in simple terms. When I wrote about Roman education based on Augustine’s Confession, for example, I compared the experience Augustine had described in Book 1 with high expectations of academic excellence common in Eastern Asia cultures. I compared Augustine’s accounts of him being beaten in school because of his “[indulgence] in learning” with the childhood memory of my mom “threatening” me to practice the piano with a ruler in her hand — a memory that many teens of eastern Asian descent could relate to. Augustine’s detest in learning the Greek language and grammar also recalled my struggles in trying to memorize English words and rules throughout elementary and middle school. As expected, a few readers commented that Augustine’s description of his childhood education resonated with their own experience in learning English, practicing musical instruments, and taking numerous extracurricular classes over the weekends. I, too, was surprised by the similarities I was able to draw between the Roman world 1600 years ago and the modern world.
Recently, I had worked with Sirui (Blanche) Cheng, a Chinese student of my age studying at Benenden School in the UK, and her WeChat platform “StoneCity Classics”. We planned and hosted a virtual forum, themed Amor Omnia Vincit, that was open to all Chinese secondary school students on April 2nd and 3rd. We invited five instructor that are respectively undergraduate students, Ph.D. candidate, and professor from the University of Oxford, University of Bologna, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Stanford University, and Fudan University. We directed our Harkness discussions and lectures over Zoom around Homer’s Odyssey, Sappho, Propertius, and Catullus.
We eventually attracted over thirty high school students in China at our two-day forum. We did not expect our attendants to be proficient in English and prepared a Chinese translation for all the reading materials, alongside with the English translation and the original Ancient Greek or Latin texts. For me, it was indeed interesting to compare the wording of the Chinese and English translations to the original Latin texts and to see how Chinese scholars had employed phrases and idioms from ancient Chinese literature into their translations of ancient Roman literature. In simple terms, most Chinese idioms tell distinctive folktales that express certain sentiments or have certain implications, which Chinese translators of Greco-Roman literature had skillfully included in their work. Due to the complex nature of ancient Chinese idioms and folktales, I am not able to fully explain the roles of those phrases. Yet the intricate cross-cultural connection expressed through translations is simply fascinating.
Not only did we analyze poems that were prepared for discussions, but we also had an interesting discussion on whether it would be appropriate to introduce the theme of love to Chinese middle and high schools. While similar controversial topics as such are fervently debated in western academia, especially around Ovid’s Amores and Ars Amatoria, our discussion may have been the first time to examine this topic under the context of Chinese middle and high schools, where two students of different genders holding hands at school could be seen as “breaking the rules”.
As I am busy dealing with schoolwork and preparing for college applications coming up in less than six months, I, unfortunately, barely have time to run the WeChat account. Yet I am looking to continue writing and publishing Latin-learning resources and articles on Roman culture and literature during spring and summer breaks. I hope to use Chinese to explain and summarize grammar rules, ranging from declension and tenses to clauses and literary devices, which will be helpful for Chinese students to prepare for the AP Latin exam. Apart from using the WeChat Platform as a tutorial website, I also wish to write about history, philosophy, culture and traditions, and everyday Roman lives. Not only does researching and writing help me to understand the ancient world better, but I also enjoy bringing this fascinating yet foreign culture to the Chinese audience. I want to eliminate the language and cultural barriers that, a few years ago, had once hindered me to learn Latin.
Fortunately, I begin to see more Chinese people becoming interested in Classics. While Classics is offered as a major only in Beijing Foreign Studies University, it has emerged as either a minor or as a program in several other elite universities in China. Hujiang Online, a language-learning institute, now offers a beginning-level Latin course at around 300 USD (1800 RMB). Videos based on Cambridge Latin Course, Wheelock’s Latin, and Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata are now available (some in Chinese) on the Bilibili, a video platform similar to YouTube. Latin textbooks written in English are translated into Chinese and made available through TaoBao and JingDong, the equivalent of Amazon in China. The Dickinson Classics Online program under Dickinson College and Shanghai Normal University now has a Latin-Chinese core vocabulary list and a Chinese translation of excerpts from Vergil, Catullus, Caesar, Ovid, and Horatius. Of course, there are also emerging student-run online organizations centered on Classics, like my “Lingua Latina” platform and Blanche Cheng’s “StoneCity” platform on WeChat. Those student initiatives, combined with professional efforts of translating, are making Classics more accessible in China.
