Book Review: The Life and Times of Hu Wenzhong at Beijing Foreign Studies University

chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2024-01-29 16:15

"Professor Hu's own English was always beautiful. He was gracious, warm, wise, diplomatic, good-humored and supportive—a true role model and an inspiration to his students." — Nicholas Jose, author and emeritus professor, University of Adelaide. 

"His [Hu Wenzhong] vast knowledge, his world experience, his wisdom, his generosity and his being genuinely respectful to others have earned him enormous respect." — Jing Han, professor and director of Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts & Culture, Western Sydney University. 

For some years now, Professor Hu Wenzhong has declined all the celebrations of his work anniversaries, birthdays, and symposiums proposed in his honor. Naturally the publication of his biography The Life and Times of Hu Wenzhong at Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beiwai Suiyue: Hu Wenzhong de Waiyu Rensheng), published by the New World Press in April 2023, was both a surprise and a delight to the people who know him well. It is a long-awaited book, written by Li Yao, a writer and renowned literary translator, and a close friend of Professor Hu for over three decades. There is hardly anyone else who is more qualified to be Professor Hu’s biographer than Li Yao. 

The biography was primarily based on Prof. Hu's diaries, which he has kept since high school. Letters and interviews of his friends, former colleagues, and students also form an important part. But the book is not simply a chronicle of Prof. Hu's life. Rather it centers on his achievements in foreign language education, Australian studies, and intercultural communication studies.

Foreign language education

Prof. Hu was admitted to Beijing Foreign Languages Institute or Beiwai for short (now Beijing Foreign Studies University) in 1951 when he was 16 and was chosen to be trained as an English teacher. His teachers included Chu Dagao, Wang Zuoliang, Xu Guozhang, Shui Tiantong, Margaret Turner, David and Isabel Crook, all distinguished professors of English at Beiwai. In September 1957, Prof. Hu started his career in English teaching. In the years to come, he became a distinguished professor of English. 

The most successful English learning program in China has been perhaps Follow Me, a series of TV programs originally produced by the BBC in the late 1970s to provide a crash course in English. In 1981, Prof. Hu was asked by China Central TV to host the adapted Chinese version of Follow Me with the British teacher Kathy Flower. The program was so successful that it made Prof. Hu a TV star and household name in China. It was reported that in 1983 alone, around 100 million Chinese watched Follow Me. Four decades later, some people in China still remember Follow Me and recognize Prof. Hu in public places. 

Beiwai has played a leading role in foreign language education in China. After he became an English teacher, Prof. Hu and his colleagues experimented with different teaching methods and compiled several sets of textbooks. English textbooks that Prof. Hu compiled or jointly compiled include: English Book1-4 (Commercial Press, 1975-1979); College English Book 1-2 (Commercial Press, 1983); College English (Revised) Book 1-2 (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1992); Gateway to English Book 1-2 (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1996); and English for Chinese Civil Servants (Higher Education Press, 1997). 

In the 1980s and 1990s, Prof. Hu held the positions of director of the National Editing Committee on Textbooks for Foreign Language Majors under the Ministry of Education, and director of the National Advisory Committee on Teaching Foreign Language to Majors in Higher Education under the Ministry of Education. He was tirelessly devoted to China's language education and earned wide appreciation. He wrote dozens of papers on foreign language teaching, foreign language education, foreign language planning and language policy. In 2001, he was elected president of the Chinese English Language Education Association (CELEA). In the same year, the CELEA decided to join the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) and was accepted as a member association the following year. In addition to organizing international conferences on English language teaching in China, one of the extraordinary feats of the CELEA was hosting the 16th AILA World Congress 2011 in China under the leadership of Prof. Hu. The AILA 2011 was a great success and attracted 1,480 participants from 63 countries, providing a rare opportunity for Chinese language educators and researchers to engage with international colleagues.

Australian studies 

A key member of the so-called "Gang of Nine" in the Australian studies circle, Prof. Hu studied together with eight other scholars from different Chinese universities at the University of Sydney from 1979-1981. Their teachers were Professor Leonie Kramer, the renowned chair of Australian literature, and Professor M.A.K. Halliday, the noted linguist. On the advice of Professor Wang Zuoliang, Prof. Hu chose Australian literature as a field of study and graduated with a master’s degree in 1981. 

After they returned to China, the "Gang of Nine" pioneered Australian studies in China in the 1980s. Prof. Hu set up China's first Australian studies center at Beiwai in November 1983. Australian studies courses were offered and postgraduate students enrolled. With the establishment of more Australian studies centers at East China Normal University, Soochow University, Anhui University, Xiamen University, and Xi'an International Studies University, Prof. Hu organized the first International Conference of Australian Studies in China in March 1988 and initiated the founding of the Chinese Association for Australian Studies at the conference. Prof. Hu was elected president of the Association and held the position until 2000. 

Besides teaching Australian literature, Prof. Hu supervised postgraduate students, edited special issues of Foreign Literatures on Australian literature, introducing contemporary Australian writers to Chinese readers. As president of the Chinese Association for Australian Studies, he organized seven international conferences of Australian studies in China while keeping close contact with Australian academics and writers as well. Busy as he was with teaching and administrative work, first as vice-dean of the Department of English and then as vice-president (academic) of the Institute, he wrote dozens of papers on Australian literature. He also translated Australian literary works into Chinese, including Patrick White's The Tree of Man (with Li Yao) and Voss (with Liu Shoukang), Jack Hibberd's A Stretch of the Imagination, David Williamson's The Club and A Selection of Contemporary Australian Short Stories and other short pieces. 

Prof. Hu has a long list of Australian friends he has made over the years, including Leonie Kramer, Patrick White, Michael Wilding, Brian Kiernan, Ken Stewart, Geoff Page, Jocelyn Chey, Carrillo Gantner, Nicholas Jose, Shelley Warner and many others. He introduced them to his students and colleagues and made sure that links were sustained. 

His friendship with the Nobel Prize laureate, Patrick White, was especially remarkable. They first met at White's home in 1980, a meeting arranged by Professor Arthur Davies of the University of Sydney. Prof. Hu was to become a noted White scholar in China and their friendship lasted until White's death in 1990. Prof. Hu donated all his letters from Patrick White to the National Library of Australia, as a testimony of great friendship between an Australian writer and a Chinese scholar. In March 2023 he donated his entire collection of Patrick White's works to the National Library of China, some of which were signed by the author. 

Prof. Hu's achievements in Australian studies and in promoting people-to-people links were acknowledged in Australia. In 1990, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters was conferred on him by the University of Sydney. The Australia China Council granted him the ACC Translation Award in 1996 and the ACC Distinguished Achievement Award in 1999. The University of Melbourne made him a Miegunyah Distinguished Fellow in 2003 and an Honorary Professorial Fellow in 2004.

Intercultural communication studies

Prof. Hu was recognized as a pioneer and leading academic in intercultural communication studies in China. His two-year studies at the University of Sydney from 1979-1981 ignited his strong interest in the field. As a practitioner and researcher of English teaching, he started to apply intercultural communication theories in English language teaching in the early 1980s. Realizing that intercultural communication was a blank slate in China, he introduced Western intercultural communication theories to China, edited books, wrote articles and offered postgraduate courses in the field at Beijing Foreign Studies University and Penn State University in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He collaborated with Dr. Neal Grove and wrote Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans (UNKNO, 1991), a bestseller for 10 years. Its revised edition Encountering the Chinese: A Modern Country, An Ancient Culture (Nicholas Brealey, 2010) sold well in both the US and Europe. His 27 articles on intercultural communication were included in Intercultural Communication Teaching and Research (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2015). 

When the China Association for Intercultural Communication was founded in 1995, Prof. Hu was elected its foundation president at the Association’s first International Conference held at Harbin Institute of Technology. His pioneering research and outstanding leadership helped cultivate generation after generation of scholars while promoting the reform and innovation of foreign language education. His contribution to the development of China’s foreign language education as a discipline was so significant that in 2015 he was granted the Lifetime Achievement Award in Foreign Language Education, an honor that was truly merited as a mark of his distinction. 

The Life and Times of Hu Wenzhong at Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beiwai Suiyue: Hu Wenzhong de Waiyu Rensheng) is a must-read for those who want to learn about the history of foreign language education in China, especially the period from the 1950s onwards. It also provides valuable insights on how to be a teacher and an academic. Above all, it is a book on how to be a human being. As Professor Colin Mackerras said, Prof. Hu is “an extremely distinguished scholar as well as a remarkable human being.” 

It would be a richer biography if more of Prof. Hu's life stories were included. An English version of the biography is anticipated. 


Contact the writer at ljianjun@bfsu.edu.cn