In 2011, I tried to devote 5 minutes to teaching Chinese classics in each Chinese class, and read Chinese and foreign classics with students in my spare time. Surprisingly, the response from the students was overwhelming. The following year, I submitted the "Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture into Campus Activity Plan" to the school, and founded the "Poetry Couplet Interest Class".
Grades 7 and 8 each have a Chinese Studies class and a reading class every week, and all teachers and students read "University" and "Analects" for 30 minutes a week, and the class bell has also been changed to classic poetry recitation. Since then, the distinctive sound of Langlang books on our campus has attracted teachers from all over Qianxinan Prefecture to come to learn from them.
The successful experience has made me germ a bolder idea: I want to promote the excellent traditional Chinese culture to the society! In July 2013, my friends and I founded the first pure public welfare reading organization in Qianxinan Prefecture - Jinzhou Sinology Reading Club.
Since the establishment of the reading club for ten years, we have been adhering to the concept of "cherishing public morality, doing public welfare deeds, and gathering cultural people", opened 16 cultural sections, and carried out more than 1,100 pure public welfare reading activities (including more than 800 sessions of the Xingyi General Association, more than 300 sessions of various branches and online reading salons), breaking the limitation that reading and learning can only be in a certain field, and building an interactive platform for reading and exchanging among book friends of all nationalities, ages, cultures and industries in the region. It has been highly affirmed by the society and silently supported by book lovers who spontaneously donated books.
Among them, in the reading section of Chinese classics, dozens of book friends from different professions got together to read the "Analects" in two years, "Zhou Yi" in three years, and "Mencius" in five years, and collectively discussed "Tao Te Ching", "University", "Book of Songs", Tang and Song poems, etc. Many people have benefited from this, and some book friends shared: "I used to think about eating and drinking well with my friends after work, but now I want to run to the reading club after work." If you don't read for a day, you can't sleep well at night. He also brought his family to the book club. In the course of the reading club, many such scholarly homes were born and spread all over the lights of thousands of homes in Qianxinan Prefecture.
The Zhixing Outdoor Club section gathers book friends who "read thousands of books" and "travel thousands of miles" to walk together in the mountains, forests and countryside, read together under the immersion of nature, communicate and learn from each other. Since its launch in 2016, more than 1,000 reading guides have been trained, more than 70,000 high-quality books have been collected, 20 open-book bookstores have been established, and part-time (full-time) teachers have been organized to carry out reading activities in left-behind children's schools for more than 10 times, benefiting 100,000 left-behind children. In the large-scale public welfare reading lecture section, more than 100 experts and scholars, including Professor Lu Ziwen, the first batch of national training experts in the country, Associate Professor Zhang Wei of Tsinghua University, Associate Professor Zhu Zihui of Chinese People's University, and teacher Wang Haixing of Beijing Jingshan School, were invited to Qianxian Prefecture to carry out hundreds of public welfare lectures.
In addition, the "Reading Sharing Meeting for College Students from Famous Universities" delivered by outstanding students from key universities at home and abroad, and the "Into Science" organized by book friends in different fields, have also attracted a large number of large and small book friends from different industries and different levels. At the event site, you can often see the touching scenes of white-haired grandparents, middle-aged parents and immature children studying and taking notes in the same room.
Since 2015, Yilong, Anlong, Zhenfeng, and Caiheng have successively established branches, and have formed fixed offline reading activity points relying on the High School Affiliated to Xingyi Normal School, Qianxinan Prefecture Library, Qianxinan Prefecture Cultural Center, Bishan Education Institute and other institutions. At present, there are more than 5,000 book friends in the Jinzhou Sinology Reading Club, which has built an effective platform for exploring the national reading mode with public participation, inheriting the excellent traditional Chinese culture, and caring for left-behind children, mobilizing the people's enthusiasm for learning and participating in cultural public welfare activities, and truly realizing the good social atmosphere of "learning for all, everyone participating, and everyone benefiting".
In the past ten years, the Jinzhou Sinology Reading Club has been rated as "Guizhou Province National Reading Demonstration Site" and "Guizhou Province Top Ten National Reading Activities", and has been included in the "Guizhou Province Lifelong Learning Brand Project" and "National Lifelong Learning Brand Project" for many times. Today's Jinzhou Sinology Reading Club has gone out of southwest Guizhou and has become a cultural brand in Guizhou Province.
The past ten years have also nourished me. During this period, he was invited to carry out more than 100 special lectures on reading promotion, and promoted the successful experience and methods of the reading club to schools, enterprises and institutions, first-class departments and all walks of life. The spark that was ignited at the beginning of the book club completely illuminated my life and became the brightest light in my life.
One book that influenced me: The Translation of Mencius
Classics are the crystallization of human wisdom and have a charm that transcends time and space, and "Mencius" is such a classic that has had a profound impact on me. When I first came into Mencius, I was obscure by the ancient and esoteric texts.
Since 2018, the Jinzhou Sinology Reading Club has started a journey of studying "Meng", and once a week, they will jointly study Mr. Yang Bojun's "Mencius Translation Commentary". In the past five years, each issue of reading together has been a feast for the soul. We sit around and carefully interpret the dialogue between Mencius, his students, and his contemporaries, his political ideals, ethical concepts, and the meaning of life, and think about how to integrate and practice Mencius's wisdom in modern life. This kind of study has broadened my knowledge boundaries and given me a deep understanding of Mencius's thought.
Reading Mencius is like having a dialogue with Mencius himself across time and space, and although Mencius lived in the Warring States Period, his thoughts could still resonate with the pulse of modern society.
Author: Wei Min, Vice President of Bishan Academy in Guizhou Province.