Division of Chinese Studies

This is a fundamental course to guide learners through Chinese historical and literary texts to enhance their understandings of Chinese culture while improving their literacy skills at the same time. From the works of pre-Qin philosophers to contemporary literature, learners will be encouraged to integrate various sources of information with a critical perspective to develop deeper insights into culture, history and society.

This is a fundamental Chinese language course to help learners from different language backgrounds gain basic Chinese listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. By learning basic vocabulary, Pin Yin and sentence structures in various real-life contexts, learners will be able to better understand and fit in their current living and learning lives in China.

"Introduction to Chinese Cultural History" is an honor class of the Moonshot "Oriental Philosophy" course. It is aimed at all Moonshot students. The purpose of the course is to provide students with a window to review and get in touch with Chinese culture, and guide students to understand Chinese values through Chinese cultural background and phenomena, and cultivate students' basic ability to understand and use Chinese characters, so as to help students establish their own cultural orientation and personality traits.

The course content of "Introduction to History of Chinese Culture" includes "Introduction Four Lectures" and "Twelve Lectures on Chinese Culture". "Introduction Four Lectures" uses the four concepts of "China", "culture", "history" and "introduction" to explain China's unique views on the world, culture, history and education. "Twelve Lectures on Chinese Culture" is based on the twelve developmental stages of Chinese history and the social and political background at that time, respectively describing the creation of civilization and value beliefs produced in each stage.

Chinese calligraphy is one of the most fascinating traditional art forms in China. It carries the most subtle emotions with the changing rhythm of Chinese characters and nurtures tranquillity in writers. This art form represents the unique aesthetic trait of Chinese people.

Modern calligrapher Yinmo Shen said: "Chinese calligraphy is appreciated globally because it creates amazing miracles by showing glamorous visual beauty without any color, and harmonious musical enjoyment without any sound. " Let's embark on this journey of appreciating and working on Chinese calligraphy to explore Chinese culture and emerge ourselves in the joy and beauty of art.

This is an advanced course to immerse learners in a wide range of contemporary Chinese writers and their works. In this course, we will read canonical texts from Lu Xun, Ba Jin, Lao She etc, and probe into their core value and beliefs. Effective reading and writing competencies are reinforced throughout the course.

In the course, we will read poems and novels that contain diverse immigrant cultures, learn to appreciate works and understand the author's writing choices from the perspectives of language, ideas, images and emotions, based on historical background and personal life experience, and know how to share our own reading feelings and opinions to gain aesthetic experience.

At the same time, through a comprehensive understanding of the life of overseas Chinese presented in immigrant literature, we will think about the situation we will face when we live abroad in the future, and in the process, explore the spiritual pillars that support our overseas study life.

This is a course that combines fiction reading and writing. Firstly, guide students to self read the characters and themes of famous fiction from ancient and modern times, both domestically and internationally; Secondly, in class, we will focu on discussing the highlights of novel writing techniques and styles, aiming to provide students with a wonderful reading experience from this process, gain a deep understanding of the creative style and artistic techniques of a certain fiction, and imitate and learn from them; Combining it with one's own thinking about modern society to create personal micro fiction works, aiming to exercise students' thinking, expression, and creative abilities.

"Introduction to Chinese Ancient Texts" is mainly aimed at Moonshot students who are interested in learning Chinese ancient texts. The purpose of the course is to guide students to get out of the Chinese ancient texts learning framework of exam-oriented education, to be able to read Chinese ancient texts reasonably, understand Chinese ancient texts accurately, and then appreciate Chinese ancient texts.

The course content of "Introduction to Chinese Ancient Texts" starts from the 'vain characters' of Chinese ancient texts, although most of the vain characters in Chinese ancient texts are meaningless, yet they are the key to expressing tone, and at the same time have the function similar to punctuation marks.

The main content focusing on the ancient "elementary learning", which includes Philology, Phonology, and Exegesis, is the way for Chinese scholars to understand Chinese characters. Philology covers the evolution of characters, radicals, character art (calligraphy) and word games (anagrams, psychosomatic poetry), etc. Phonology includes phonetic notation, rhyme, level and tones, and rhyme games (tongue twister, drinking order, double-tone rhyme), etc. Exegesis is a Methodology for advanced research, including the comparison of the usage of ancient characters, idioms and allusions, etc.

"Discourse on Chinese Classics" is an advanced course for students who are interested in continuing to study Chinese classics after completing introductory courses such as "Introduction to Chinese Cultural History" or "Introduction to Chinese Ancient Texts".

The course format of "Discourse on Chinese Classics" starts from students' questions and takes the question as the axis. The teacher will propose an extended bibliography for students to read the text, and then conduct discussion or research.

The course content covers the research and discussion of the Four Books and Five Classics, the Hundred Schools of Thought, etc.; the appreciation and analysis of excellent works such as poems, songs, and inscriptions; the experience and sharing of cultures such as qin, chess, calligraphy, painting, tea and food.