Teaching Jane Austen in Communist China, 1990–1996

Abstract

In 1980, the idea of teaching in China would not have occurred to me if senior Chinese lecturers in English, here for postgraduate study at the University of Sydney, had not urged me to apply.¹ My main experience had been high-school teaching but at the time, I was liaising with them as an Education officer of the Commonwealth Department of Education and teaching English to adult migrants at night. They insisted, and how could I refuse when they offered to arrange it and I could get leave without pay? So, in 1981, I taught for a semester at an institute in Chengdu (in [southwest] China), and the following year, a short intensive course in Shanghai. In both institutes, I taught English language to postgraduates preparing to study abroad, and English literature and essay writing to fourth-year English major students who would graduate as English lecturers. I found that I much preferred teaching literature. Inspired by the students’ response, I glimpsed literature’s potential to widen their horizons. I longed to encourage Chinese students to think in a more scholarly way about literature as a creative art and to enjoy it. I planned to retire early (by the end of the 1980s) so that I could return.

Originally published in Sensibilities: Journal of the Jane Austen Society of Australia 25 (2002): n.p. Reproduced with slight emendations by permission of the Jane Austen Society of Australia.