Program overview
Chinese Philology is the study of the Chinese language and characters. Simply put, it's about understanding where Chinese comes from, how it has changed, how it is used today, and why characters are written and pronounced the way they are. At the graduate level, you'll delve into core courses such as Classical Chinese, Modern Chinese, History of the Chinese Language, Chinese Paleography, Chinese Phonology, and Exegetics. For example, you might analyze the rhyming patterns in the Book of Songs or compare ancient and modern phonetic changes using dialect recordings. Chinese universities have unique strengths in this field—Peking University, Fudan University, and Beijing Normal University, among others, boast strong research teams in ancient scripts and dialects, with many professors directly involved in organizing unearthed texts (like oracle bone inscriptions and bamboo slips). This major suits students who are sensitive to language and enjoy puzzle-like learning—if you find questions like "Why was '江' pronounced 'gāng' in ancient times?" fascinating, then this is for you.