The first in the country! How to learn “unpopular secret skills”? Who will teach? Dean’s interpretation

近日，The first unpopular secret arts college among colleges and universities in the country was established at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. How cold can “unpopular” be? Who will teach? How to learn? Will I be unable to recruit students? How to ensure continuous talent development in the future?

How cold is the “unpopular trick”?

Zhan Long, Vice President of the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Dean of the Unpopular School of Unpopular Arts, said that the Unpopular School of Unpopular ArtsWhat matters is the attention, but what matters is the chain of inheritance.

One is “less”. There are tens of thousands of documents remaining in Turkic, Tangut, Khitan, Jurchen, Manchu, Naxi Dongba, Ancient Tibetan, and Yi scripts. However, some languages ​​are currently in danger of being lost. Tocharian, Sogdian, Khotanese, and Qilun scripts are even on the verge of extinction. The key to inheriting the unpopular secret knowledge is to preserve the documents. If the documents are gone and the talents are gone, the secret knowledge will be truly lost.

The second is “dispersion”. Relevant literature is scattered around the world and has not been brought together.

The third is “slow”. The training cycle for talents with unpopular skills is long, and it takes more than ten years to master a kind of writing from entry to reading; at the same time, the output and publication of results in this type of discipline are also slow.

Who will teach the “unpopular secret skills”? How to learn?

In the past, unpopular secrets were mainly distributed in different research institutions and colleges. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences integrates the research strengths of various institutes to build a long-term academic platform, break the project-driven short-term inheritance model, and ensure that unpopular knowledge is passed down in a lasting and institutionalized way. Through talent cultivation, we can achieve the purpose of inheriting bloodline and inheriting academic knowledge.

Zhan Long introduced that the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is the source and leader of domestic unpopular esoteric research. It has gathered a large number of research forces for a long time. The purpose of establishing the academy is to cultivate talents and solve the problems of talent gap, talent shortage and cultural inheritance.

“The college does not pursue scale when it comes to talent training, but pursues fewer but better, and selects students who are truly ambitious, sentimental, responsible, and determined to join this team. The establishment of the college is not about ‘robbing people,’ but ‘finding people,’ finding those who are truly willing to entrust their lives to the inheritance of unpopular skills.” Zhan Long said.

What is the value of “unpopular secrets”?

Huang Dekuan, director of the Unearthed Documents Research and Protection Center of Tsinghua University, said that the most important value of ancient writings such as oracle bone inscriptions is the inheritance and development of Chinese civilization. Nowadays, understanding of ancient history mainly relies on handed down documents, and oracle bone inscriptions and bamboo slips are first-hand original materials. The construction of modern civilization must be based on traditional culture, and a better understanding of the past of Chinese civilization will be conducive to promoting the construction of contemporary civilization.

From an application perspective, Chinese characters are the only characters in the world that have native origin and have continued uninterrupted for thousands of years. After more than three thousand years, the structure of Chinese characters developed from oracle bone inscriptions is stable. Although the shape has changed, the evolution process is clear. The study of ancient characters can reveal the evolution history of Chinese characters from ancient times to the present, and better understand how each character is constructed and the historical and cultural connotation behind each character. Helping users of Chinese characters understand the cultural context behind them is very meaningful for promoting Chinese education and traditional cultural education.

How to ensure the continuous supply of talents with “unpopular skills”?

Huang Dekuan pointed out that talent succession is an unavoidable and important issue in the development of unpopular ancient writing skills. The inheritance and development of this type of discipline depends on the willingness of many scholars to sit on the bench for a long time and devote themselves to it, so that they can have successors and continue their unique learning.