Malaysian students practice calligraphy with Chinese brushes. These students joined the autumn camp of Chinese Bridge, a Chinese proficiency competition for foreign college students, in October and had a cultural and learning experience in Hainan Province for 9 days. 

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There have been three main waves in the history of cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries. The first was in the Han and Tang dynasties, followed by a wave in the late Ming Dynasty and then another in the early stages of the Qing Dynasty, which continued in the late Qing Dynasty and the early phase of the Republic period.

These waves primarily extended cultures in Asia that were heavily affected by Confucian culture. By and large, Chinese culture didn’t spread further than this.

In the context of modern Chinese language promotion, it is our duty to tell a good Chinese story and spread Chinese culture. Edward Sapir, an American anthropologist-linguist in the 20th century, once said that languages cannot live without culture. The core of cultural communication is to understand different cultures and to achieve recognition of cultural identity to some extent.  

With the improvement in China’s international political and economic status, communication between China and foreign countries has become increasingly frequent. More and more people overseas would like to learn Chinese language and culture. In order to satisfy both their demands for learning Chinese and our needs to spread our language essences, China has built many Confucius Institutes and opened Chinese language courses overseas. Meanwhile, thousands of foreign students come to China to learn Chinese language and culture every year.

For decades, China has achieved great contributions in the international spread of Chinese language. But in the aspect of Chinese cultural communication, there were few apparent results. Many media outlets emphasize traditional forms of culture, such as calligraphy, shadowboxing and Peking Opera. In reality, these forms of culture are no longer prominent in the daily lives of Chinese young people.

As early as the middle of the 20th century, Lu Zhiwei, a Chinese psychologist and linguist, indicated in the preface of Language and Culture, written by another famous linguist Luo Changpei, that Chinese language is a tool Chinese people created to disseminate culture, and the nature of Chinese culture can be found in the lifestyles of the Chinese masses instead of the literati and royal family.

After all, pursuits like playing the lyre, chess, calligraphy and painting used to be the privilege of royal elites. These elite forms of culture cannot represent the masses’ attitudes toward culture. Examined from this perspective, pursuits like calligraphy and Peking Opera cannot encompass the complete picture of Chinese culture. So, more and more scholars have criticized the fact that modern genres of performances, which mix elements of martial arts, cheongsams and painted faces, have become merely formalistic and superficial, and cannot truly help international cultural exchanges.

Culture is a broad concept, including elements of daily life, political systems and academic ideas. Its rich contents should run through the language learning process for foreign learners.

The study of second languages is a form of cross-cultural communication. Foreign accents aren’t an obstacle for people to communicate verbally. But different understandings of culture indeed hinder the objectivity of cultural cognition. Cultural communication must be taken seriously, and we should know our own cultural patterns and characteristics before promoting them on the world stage.             

 
Therefore, from Chinese language promotion to cultural communication, we should base our efforts on China’s native culture, which is the result of Chinese people’s long-term wisdom, seeking similarities while preserving minor differences to achieve effective exchanges with other countries.