TAIPEI, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- At a Taipei bookstore, books on finance, business and modern literature dominate the shelves, while history books are relegated to a quiet corner, offering a glimpse of why concerns are rising over young people's waning interest in traditional Chinese culture.
A female staff member at the bookstore said she could not recall a recent sale of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms," one of China's must-read classics.
"I find that our young customers prefer buying introductory books on Egyptian and Western European history, probably to prepare for traveling abroad," she said.
Concerns about the changing reading preferences are part of a wider discussion in Taiwan over the island's education curriculum and textbooks, which critics say have increasingly marginalized classical Chinese literature and disrupted the teaching of Chinese history.
"There may have been some exaggeration about Taiwan students who don't know a well-known chapter in 'The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,' but to some extent this is not entirely alarmist," said Chang Fu-kung, vice chairman of Taiwan's Publishers Association.
Interest in Chinese classics in Taiwan has been declining, and the root cause may lie in changes in educational ideology, he said.
With "education reform" starting in the 1990s amid a rising secessionist narrative, the changes to curriculum and textbook guidelines in Taiwan have been highly political, aimed at removing Chinese cultural elements and severing historical ties with the Chinese mainland.
Taiwan adopts a textbook selection system in which the education department issues guidelines on what should be included in textbooks, and schools can then choose from different editions of textbooks that follow the guidelines.
With the implementation of the 2019 guidelines, the number of recommended classical texts for senior high school students has been reduced to 15 from 30 recommended by the previous guidelines. Several landmark works that are important for Chinese identity and values are no longer on the recommended list.
Textbooks for subjects such as Chinese language and history compiled under the guidelines have also drawn criticism for reducing both the proportion and depth of study of classical works, while weakening the continuity and systematic presentation of history.
In a junior-high history textbook, for example, the year 1624, when Dutch colonists occupied parts of southern Taiwan, is presented as an important starting point for Taiwan's so-called "period of international competition." By contrast, the 1662 victory of a historic campaign by Zheng Chenggong, a Chinese military leader, to recover Taiwan from the Dutch, is described briefly as an attack on a Dutch stronghold in Taiwan.
Before the 2019 textbook guidelines, Chinese history was taught as a separate subject in Taiwan's middle schools, with students studying it over several semesters. History textbooks generally followed a chronological structure, starting from the birth of Chinese civilization and covering various imperial dynasties before reaching contemporary history.
Since the late 1990s, however, curriculum revisions have reduced the content and classroom hours devoted to Chinese history. Under the current senior high school curriculum, Chinese history is taught as part of a broader East Asian and regional history, completely separated from the history of Taiwan.
Tuan Hsin-i, secretary-general of a local association for promoting Chinese language education, noted that the guidelines had "broken up the timeline of history and how the geography textbook defines region, and minimized teaching materials on Chinese culture and from the classics."
This has deconstructed students' sense of national identity, leading to a situation in which some under 20 are unfamiliar with Sun Yat-sen, a great forerunner of China's democratic revolution, and those under 30 are unfamiliar with the 1911 Revolution, which put an end to more than 2,000 years of feudal rule in China, let alone Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, both living before the Common Era, she noted.
Some teachers worry that without a systematic grounding in history, students may end up understanding only the words in a classical text but not the world in which the text was born.
Ou Gui-zhi, who used to work as a teacher at Taipei First Girls High School, said the reduction in classical texts, together with fewer hours devoted to Chinese-language courses, could deprive students of opportunities to explore traditional values and reflect on responsibility and integrity through classical literature.
Wang, a freshman at Ming Chuan University, experienced this firsthand. During a trip to the Chinese mainland in July, he visited the Yellow Crane Tower in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, a historical site frequently featured in ancient Chinese literature.
He said he could only vaguely recall a few lines in a famous ancient poem, while knowing little about when the poem was written or what it meant. "I felt sorry that I could not fully appreciate the beauty of the site," he said.
"Out of helplessness, some parents and teachers in Taiwan have even compiled their own Chinese language and history textbooks," said Lin An-wu, former dean of the College of Humanities, Communication and Social Sciences of Tzu Chi University. "I hope that the difficult situation facing education could prompt broader and deeper public discussion."
"Education should not sever people from their cultural roots. Only by looking at ourselves through the perspective of our own Chinese culture can we understand where we should go," Ou said. "Classics should not be forgotten." ■
