Peking University, May 24th: On May 19th, the 10th “New Youth • Enjoy Reading” Salon was held in the Peking University Library. Professor Chen Pingyuan, from Department of Chinese Language and Literature, was specially invited by New Youth Web Culture Workshop as the reading instructor. In memory of 118th anniversary of Peking University, The Stories of Old Peking University was selected in this salon. Participants appreciated the spirit of old PKUers during the reading as well as considered carefully about their ambitions of growing up as “digital native”.
Different from the previous salons, this reading salon made some changes in organization. With the support of Yunshuxie online platform, people can join the group by online invitation before the original offline debate, adding some nice touch to online discussion. In addition, video and audio media were furtherly utilized to maximum reading resource sharing.
Professor Chen Pingyuan
The reading salon is divided into three parts, instructor leading reading, free questioning and free discussion. In the reading part, Chen Pingyuan introduced the writing background of The Stories of Old Peking University and made a brief review of PKU’s history. He emphasized that the value of a university’s history depends on the depth instead of the length, so it was useless to trace back to the history without careful consideration.
In the next two parts, students from several departments and colleges actively shared their questions about the reading and the teacher’s instruction. One asked the talent training purpose of Peking University, receiving active responses. On this topic, Chen Pingyuan said that Peking University not only set up a public platform to all students but also show enough respect to the individual’s differences. According the identity transfer issue put forward by a student from Graduate School of Education, Chen said he would combine his specialty research with college’s liberal education in the future.
The group photo
Background information:
On the eve of the 20th World Reading Day in April 2015, new youth web culture workshop formally launched “New Youth • Enjoy Reading” salon, as a response of fragmented and “fast-food” reading pattern, which exists everywhere in online times. The salon opens to the whole university.
In the past year, Qiu Zeqi, Zhang Fan, Ping Xinqiao and other popular professors were invited to join the salon, gradually promoting the depth paper reading pattern in the youth. More reading activities have been organized led by it. In May, 2016, Peking University formally recommended “New Youth, Enjoy Reading” salon to Beijing Government as the school’s excellent reading project.
Written by: Fu Guirong
Edited by: Zhang Jiang
