Professor Boping Yuan gives a fascinating, first-hand insight into growing up in Chairman Mao’s China and how the reopening of Chinese universities in the 1970s and the British Council helped him to progress from a carpenter in rural China to a professor at the University of Cambridge.
I was born and raised in Qingdao, a coastal city in eastern China. In 1966, while people in England celebrated their football team's World Cup victory, Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in China. During the Cultural Revolution, young people were encouraged to rebel against intellectuals and capitalists, halting education across the country. 'Political correctness' pervaded every aspect of life; at school, we had to study Mao's 'Little Red Book' and compete in reciting his writings, speeches, and poems. Even our scant English lessons were filled with political propaganda.
As the Cultural Revolution progressed, an increasing number of students were idle in cities without jobs or schools, leading to social issues. To address this, Chairman Mao urged young students to go to the countryside for 're-education' by peasants. Millions of young students, including myself, heeded this call. Whether it was a scorching summer or a freezing winter, we worked in the fields and continued studying the 'Little Red Book' during breaks to show our loyalty to Chairman Mao.
Later, I became an apprentice carpenter in a house-building corporation, avoiding farm work. This carpentry job involved fixing wooden beams and installing windows high above the ground without any safety measures. The skills I acquired during this time benefited me later in life; for instance, I made a wooden table for my elder brother's wedding and installed a new roof on my garden shed in Cambridge!
Chairman Mao's death in 1976 marked the end of the Cultural Revolution and the reopening of universities in China. I was fortunate to be among the first cohort of students to take the entrance examination and start university life in 1977/1978. With Deng Xiaoping's opening-up policy, China welcomed foreign institutions to run programmes at Chinese universities.
In 1986, I joined a postgraduate programme in applied linguistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, co-run by the British Council and directed by Helen Oaty, now Emeritus Professor at Warwick University. In 1988, with Helen's recommendation and support, I received a Hornby Scholarship from the British Council to study for an MSc in Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. The following year, I was awarded by the British Council a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholarship for a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the same university.
I vividly remember going to the British Embassy in Beijing in August 1988 to collect my scholarship documents and plane ticket to London. During the Cultural Revolution, the embassy building had been targeted by Red Guards, and images of anti-UK/US 'imperialism' posters on the wall and the burnt embassy building were revolutionary symbols. The embassy officer handing me the documents was Michael O’Sullivan, who later became Director of the British Council in China.
The Department of Applied Linguistics at Edinburgh University was the first academic institution in the world to focus on research in applied linguistics. There, I was taught by renowned scholars in linguistics such as Alan Davies, Anthony Howard, Keith Mitchell, and Antonella Sorace. I studied alongside international students, including Chinese students like Huang Guowen and Chen Youlin, who are now influential linguists in China, as well as famous Chinese professors in the field, such as Gui Shichun and Li Xiaoju from Guangdong Foreign Language Institute, China, who were visiting scholars at that time.
It is now over 30 years since I left Edinburgh in September 1992 when I was offered a job teaching and directing the modern Chinese programme at the University of Cambridge. I have fond memories of my studies and life there. The British Council’s program at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the MSc in Applied Linguistics at Edinburgh profoundly influenced my approaches to pedagogical issues in Cambridge, including syllabus design, language assessment, teaching methodology, material development and teacher training.
My doctoral training in Edinburgh equipped me with solid knowledge in theoretical linguistics and empirical research skills, enabling me to conduct high-quality research on Chinese as a non-native language, with my findings published in top international journals. I am pleased that my monograph, ’Interlanguage Grammars of Mandarin Chinese,’ will be published by Cambridge University Press this year.
In Cambridge, I was fortunate to have smart undergraduate students eager to learn the Chinese language and understand China’s culture, its past and present societies and its people. I have had the privilege to supervise many bright and diligent doctoral students who have successfully obtained PhDs from Cambridge University. I hope these young researchers will continue their work and supervise their own students in the field of Chinese as a non-native language worldwide.
The British Council's mission is to "support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding, and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide." As a scholar with a British Council-sponsored education background, I am pleased to have contributed to this mission. In addition to my teaching of and research in Chinese language and linguistics at Cambridge, I also played a key role in welcoming Chinese leaders to Cambridge and promoting international exchange and collaboration, evidenced by the joint research lab on bilingualism between Cambridge and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and successful international conferences organised at Cambridge.
Looking back over my 30-year academic career, I can confidently say that without the invaluable support of the British Council, I would not be where I am today. I owe a great deal to the British Council. Thank you for all you have given to me and created for me. Happy 90th Birthday!