On November 6, the first college of unpopular secret arts in universities across the country was established at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. At the same time, the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences also took the lead in launching the "National Unpopular Secret Arts Alliance" including Tsinghua University, China's First Historical Archives, etc., to promote the passing on of unpopular secret arts in the new era through measures such as resource sharing, collaborative research, and talent cultivation. What are some unpopular secrets? What is the current status of development? How to keep the unpopular from being unpopular and keep learning the best? This issue of "News 1+1" focuses on: Who will teach the "Unpopular Secret Skills" Academy? How to learn?
How cold can "unpopular" be? What are the difficulties faced in real life?
Zhan Long, Vice President of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Dean of the Unpopular School of Secret Studies: How cold is it? In a word: the coldness lies in the attention, but the absolute chain of inheritance. It can be summed up in about three words.
The first one is "less". For example, Turkic, Xixia, Khitan, Jurchen, Manchu, Naxi Dongba, ancient Tibetan, Yi, etc., all have tens of thousands of documents behind them, but some types of languages are currently in danger of being discontinued. For example, Tocharian, Sogdian, Khotanese, and Qilin scripts are currently on the verge of extinction. Therefore, the key to inheriting unpopular secrets is to preserve the documents. The literature is gone, the talent is gone, and this unique skill is truly lost.
The second one is "dispersion". The literature is distributed across the globe and is not aggregated.
The third one is "slow". Talents from unpopular secrets grow slowly, and it takes more than ten years to learn to read a type of text. In addition, the results of unpopular secrets are also relatively slow to be produced and published.
Therefore, the biggest fear of unpopular secret skills is not that no one knows about it, but that no one can pass it on and no one can catch it.
What real-life problems can be solved by integrating them into an academy for research?
Zhan Long, Vice President of the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Dean of the School of Unpopular Secret Arts: In the past, unpopular secret arts were mainly distributed in different research institutions and different colleges, and the disciplinary characteristics of unpopular secret arts themselves are multidisciplinary. How to integrate multiple disciplines and fields to form an organized and substantial institution is an inevitable trend. Therefore, we are trying to integrate the research strength of the entire Academy of Social Sciences in various institutes to form a long-term institution that can create learning. In this way, we can break the past short-term inheritance model of project funding scattered across various colleges, and ensure that the unpopular skills are passed down in a long-lasting and institutionalized way. Through talent cultivation, we can achieve the purpose of inheriting bloodline and inheriting academic knowledge.
Is it possible to have well-prepared teachers but fail to recruit students?
Zhan Long, Vice President of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Dean of the School of Unpopular Secret Arts: The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is the origin and leader of my country’s Unpopular Secret Arts. It has gathered a large number of research forces for a long time. This is also the greatest confidence for the University of Social Sciences to establish the College of Unpopular Secret Arts. We established this college to cultivate talents, solve the problem of talent shortage and shortage, and solve the problem of cultural inheritance. The college does not pursue scale when it comes to talent training, but pursues fewer but better, which means truly selecting students with ambition, feelings, responsibility and determination into this team. Recently, we have also launched the "Dingtang Class" for undergraduates with unpopular special skills. The selection criteria mainly depend on whether students have these points. Therefore, our establishment of the academy is not to "rob people" but to "find people" and find those who are truly willing to entrust their lives to the inheritance of unpopular secrets. This is the main purpose of our establishment of the academy.
What is the value of unpopular secrets such as oracle bones and bamboo slips?
Huang Dekuan, Director of the Center for Research and Protection of Unearthed Documents at Tsinghua University: The primary value lies in the value of ancient writings such as oracle bone inscriptions on the inheritance and development of Chinese civilization. Chinese civilization has a long history, and its early history relies on ancient writing to record and preserve it. Our current understanding of ancient history mainly relies on documents handed down from ancient times. Texts such as oracle bone inscriptions and bamboo slips were recorded and preserved by people at that time and are first-hand original materials. Our construction of modern civilization must be based on traditional culture, and a better understanding of the past of Chinese civilization will be conducive to promoting the construction of contemporary civilization. Therefore, from the perspective of the inheritance and development of civilization, we cannot do without ancient characters, and we must also carry out research on ancient characters. This is also the important practical significance and value of ancient characters such as oracle bone inscriptions.
From the perspective of how we use words, everyone is writing Chinese characters today. Chinese characters are the only script in the world that originated from the native land and has been used continuously for thousands of years without interruption. This is the only one in the history of world civilization. Compared with oracle bone inscriptions and modern Chinese characters, although more than three thousand years have passed, the structure of Chinese characters is stable. Although the shape has changed and there are differences between ancient and modern times, this development and evolution can be linked. Through the study of ancient characters, we can reveal the evolution history of Chinese characters from ancient times to the present, and we can better understand how each character is constructed and the historical and cultural connotation behind each character. When every one of us who writes and recognizes Chinese characters can understand the profound historical and cultural connotations behind Chinese characters, we can inherit and develop our culture well and use characters well. This is very meaningful for promoting Chinese education and traditional cultural education.
How to ensure a continuous flow of talents through employment security?
Huang Dekuan, Director of the Unearthed Documents Research and Protection Center of Tsinghua University: This issue is indeed a relatively important and unavoidable issue facing the development of the unpopular science of ancient writing. We must inherit and develop unpopular secrets. For subjects such as oracle bone inscriptions and other ancient writing studies, if we want to develop, we must pass it on from generation to generation. Historically, the reason why our unpopular secrets can still be passed down to this day depends on the fact that many scholars have been willing to sit on the bench for a long time and can persist in continuing to work hard in such a field, so that this discipline can have successors and endless secrets.
Today, we are developing and attaching great importance to unpopular secrets. In modern society, it is not easy for young people to enter this threshold. First, through publicity and popularization, young people must understand the practical significance and great value of learning ancient characters such as oracle bone inscriptions, and then undergo rigorous training to develop a good study style and lay a solid foundation so that they can succeed in learning and become future heirs.
But the very real problem is that after spending a long time studying, whether you can play your role well will have to solve the employment problem. Therefore, I hope that society will pay more attention to the development of the ancient writing discipline and provide more employment opportunities for students with unpopular skills. In fact, if we pay attention to this subject, the employment prospects of this subject should be relatively broad.
