During the course of the data processing and report drafting, we sometimes revisit the interviewees and request further clarifications on certain important matters.
- Gathering of Data
All the questionnaires are in hard copy. The data are gathered by hand.
- Drafting of Report
Based on the data gathered from the questionnaires and the information collected during the in-depth interviews, we separately drafted different parts of this Report according to the facts we obtained during the survey, for reflecting the reading situation of the students of the Chinese Department, and analyzing the motives of reading, the mentalities during reading, and other influencing factors.
- Relevant Statistics
The total number of the questionnaires distributed is 150, of which 142 are retrieved and 136 are valid replies. The response rate is 94.7%, while the valid response rate is 90.7%. The numbers and percentages of students being surveyed are set forth in the following tables by year or major.
Table 1 Number of students by Year
Table 2 Undergraduates of 05’ and 06’ by Major
Since the undergraduate students in their first year (07’) have not been allocated to classes of different majors, only the undergraduates of 05’ and 06’ are required to fill in the “major” blank in the questionnaires during our survey.
Table 3 Distribution of Interviewees of In-depth Interviews.
To make the sample distribution of this survey as extensive and balanced as possible, and to render the final result of the survey as a representative one that can be applied to the students of the Chinese Department as a whole, all the above percentages of students by gender are maintained in accordance with the actual percentage of the students by gender, and the sample has included students of the Chinese Department in all different years.
Part Ⅲ Research Outcome
Chapter 1 Overview
This chapter is mainly an overview of literature reading, including reading hours per week, personal reading habits, and accesses to literature books, etc.
The first question with 4 options is about literature reading hours per week. There are 34.1% of all interviewee spent more than 7 hours on reading per week, namely on average more than one hour a day. This is also the largest group. The second largest group is 1-3 hours per week. With several percentage less, 4-7 hours per week is the third largest group. There’s much less interviewee chose the option “Rarely any”, and only one interviewee chose “Uncertain”.
The second question is about the way to read, and also an indication of the depth of reading.
41.9% of the interviewee chose “Perusing”; the second popular choice is “Skimming”, which occupied 36.8%. As for literature works, the students from Chinese Department have different purpose and access, therefore they made different choices on what and how they read. We had discussed this in in-depth interview. Some students did mention the importance of taking notes in order to understand the work properly. But however, different literature works contains different connotations. As for internet literature, people always skim it over quickly. One student described it as “fossicking gold in desert”. Therefore, it is nature to choose different way to read different literature works with different purpose. Students who chose “Others” always read in different ways rather than a certain one.
The following question is aimed at the access to literature works. It requires choosing top 3 accesses and ranking them. The source of literature works changes significantly after entering college. As for PKU, the first and most important source is library. The second source is the bookstores nearby, such as Bo Ya Tang, Han Xue Bookstore, and Zhong Guan Cun Book Store, etc. In the survey, 79.1% of interviewees rank “Library” as their first source, which is an overwhelmingly dominant proportion. The second largest first source is “Bookstore”. It takes 14.9%. And “E-books from internet” takes 4.6%.
When it comes to the second and third source, it varies. As for the second source, “Bookstore” takes the leading position by a proportion of 59.7%. On the third source competition, the top two options are “Borrowing” and “E-books from internet”. It can be seen that the interviewees are more willingly to borrow from the library, and then they’ll resort to bookstore. After these two sources they may borrow from others or read on the internet. There are not so much student buy books from the internet. But this new way of buying books from “Dangdang” or “Joyo” is getting more and more unneglectable.
It is noteworthy that there are 10 interviewees chose only 1 source and 19 chose only 2.
Chapter 2 Content of Reading
Section 1 Overview
This section is mainly about the content of reading, including the starting point of literature works, leisure reading, the comparison of local and foreign literature reading, and reading of the 3 important period of Chinese literature.
The first question focuses on what is the first literature work interviewee has read, and when did he/she read it. 104 interviewees have specified the name of the books, among which 35.6% is fairytales, 25.0% is Chinese classical, 20.2% is foreign, and 16.3% is Chinese modern.
On the content of reading, among 37 interviewees who chose “Fairytale”, there are 12 “Andersen” and 5 “Green Brothers”. From the gender perspective, there’re only 4 males, and the other 33, namely 89%, are females.
For the 26 interviewees who chose Chinese classical literature, 20 of them chose “Four Chinese Classical Masterpieces” as their first literature experience. The other 6 interviewee chose Three Character Classic, Romance of Enfeoffment to Deities, Selection of Tang Poems, 300 Tang Poems, Book of Poetry, and Moralizing Quotations.
Among the 17 who chose Chinese modern literature, 6 interviewees read Kong Fu novel as their first literature book, 4 male and 2 female. Another 4 female students read “17-years Literature”.
We also investigated into the exact time of the first literature experience.
From the starting point of literature, most of the interviewee starts early. 75% of them start literature reading in pre-school or primary school. And also, different kind of literature starts at different stage. The earliest is fairytale, all of the interviewees who read fairytale began their literature experience before middle school. Meanwhile, foreign literature comes late. 86% of the interviewee who chose foreign literature started their journey in primary school or junior middle school. Only one of them started in pre-school, and the latest one began in high school.
The next question is about leisure reading. We investigate the top 3 fields on which leisure reading focus. There are 9 options, namely, politics, economics, military, science, literature, history, philosophy, fashion, and entertainment. The following graph is just a selection of 4-5 most popular options, the other options all belong to “Others”.
For their 1st choice, 134 responds are valid, of which “Literature” occupies 69.4%, taking the first place by a large margin. The following fields are politics, history and entertainment. Only 1 interviewee chose science, and no one chose economics or military.
On the 2nd popular field in leisure reading, 132 valid responds are collected. Except those listed in the chart, there’s 1 person chose military and another chose economics. It is noticeable that “entertainment” is taking a larger proportion this time and becoming an unnegelectable part in leisure reading. Philosophy is still popular, but the trend is that philosophy falls behind entertainment. This somehow reflects the change in reading interest for post-80s’. Compare to the most popular field, the second popular fields for leisure reading varies. There’s a balance of literature and other subjects, which reflects the real interest of the interviewees.
For the 3rd popular field, among 125 valid responds, “Entertainment” occupies 21.6%. “History” and “Philosophy” takes 15.7% for each. And “Fashion” takes 14.2%. Although entertainment has taken the lead in this part, serious topics like history and philosophy are still popular.
To sum up, literature, history entertainment and philosophy are the most popular topics for students in the Chinese Language and Literature Department, and science, economics, and military are the least popular ones.
Since Chinese literature is essential to students in Chinese Department, we made further investigation on the reading of Chinese literature. We separated Chinese literature into 3 parts, namely, A: Ancient, B: Modern, C: Contemporary, and asked interviewees to rank the 3 of them. 134 valid responds were collected as follows.
25.4% of the interviewees ranked their reading content in order of Contemporary > Modern > Ancient. 40.2% of them ranked Modern literature as top of their reading list. Another 19.4% of them ranked Ancient > Modern > Contemporary. There’s another 0.8% read ancient literature only, and 1.5% read contemporary literature only. The ranking of the reading content here is not an indication of reading capacity, but rather a reading preference. We followed up this topic with a few more questions.
Section 2 Ancient Literature
In the field of ancient Chinese literature, we investigated the favorite type of literature, favorite writer, favorite works, completion of reading classics, and the acceptance of “Four Chinese Classical Masterpieces”.
1. The favorite type, writer, and works in ancient literature
Among 134 interviewees, 129 valid responds were collected. The result shows as follows.
From the general perspective, the ranking is Poem, Ci and Qu > Novel > Essay > Opera Script. As for the favorite writer and works, the result goes as follows.
(1) Poem, Ci, and Qu
a. Poems:
Su Shi (21), Li Bai (14), Du Fu, Wang Wei, Li Shangyin, Lu You, Du Mu, and Bai Juyi
Book of Poetry (8), 19 Ancient Poems, Origin of Ancient Poems, Jing Ye Si
b. Ci and Qu
Xin Qiji (5), Li Qingzhao (4), Nalan Xingde (2), Wen Tingjun (1), Li Yu (1), Liu Yong (1), Yan Jidao (1)
(2) Novel
A Dream of Red Mansion (23), Romance of Three Kingdoms (6), A Journey to the West (2), The Scholars (2), The Strange Tales of Liaochai (2), The Outlaws of the Marsh (1), Shi Shuo Xin Yu (1), Three “Yan” and Two “Pai” (1), Flowers in the Mirror (1), Six Chapters of a Floating Life (1), Biography of Huo XiaoYu (1), Legends of Tang Dynasty (1), Chivalrous Novel (1), Four Chinese Classical Masterpieces (1)
(3) Essay
Pre-Qin: Chuang Tsu (6), The Analects (1), Mencius (1), Lie Zi (1), and Tao Te Ching (1)
Historical biography: Records of Historian (4), Zuo’s Commentary (1)
Ancient essays: Han Yu (1), Liu Zongyuan (1), Ouyang Xiu (1)
(4) Opera Scrpit
The Peony Pavilion (3), The Peach Blossom Fan (1)
It can be concluded from the above that although the most popular poet is Su Shi, most of the popular poets belong to Tang Dynasty. From the perspective of novel, among all 23 interviewees who chose A Dream of Red Mansion, 19 are female. In the category of essay, Chuang Tsu has won the first place among all pre-Qin essays. In opera script category, students pay more attention to works than writers. Overall speaking, interviewees prefer poetry and novel to other types. Opera script receives less attention. It may because the script without stage performing cannot fully illustrate the charm of opera. The Peony Pavilion, as an exception, receives more attention because of the popularity of Kunqu Opera recently. As far as we know, many people read the script as preparation of going for the show in theatre.
2. Understanding of pre-Qin period classics
As a student in Chinese Department, it is the basic requirement to read the classics. And pre-Qin, pre-Han, and post-Han literature works have been seen as the origin of Chinese literature. It is difficult but still important to read them through. And Chinese Department has set specific courses on these works. Therefore, in the survey, we emphasize on the “completion” of the reading.
92 valid responds were collected out of 93 answers. Generally speaking, the 7 works shows above are almost read completely. Besides these, some students have read Han Fei Zi and Zuo’s Commentary completely. Among all the works, The Analects has taken the leading position by a large margin. There’re 87 students in all 4 grades who have completed the reading of The Analects, takes a percentage of 93.5%.
From the perspective of grades distribution, freshmen have a concentrated experience of completely reading, namely, on The Analects. There’re also 2-3 students who complete Mencius, Chuang Tsu, and Tao Te Ching, respectively. For sophomore students, most of them have completed Mencius, namely, 27 out of 34. But the junior students have showed less completely reading experience than the other 2 grades. This is highly relevant with the requirement of the courses. This point will be further illustrated in the last part’s research on the reading purpose and affecting factors.
3. Understanding and acceptance on “Four Chinese Classical Masterpieces”
To investigate the reading of “Four Chinese Classical Masterpieces”, we set both “completely read” and “partly read” in the question. We also set “TV series watched” so that comparisons can be made. The question goes like this:
Among the “Four Chinese Classical Masterpieces”, you have completely read , partly read , and watched the TV series of .
A. A Dream of Red Mansion
B. A Journey to the West
C. Romance of Three Kingdoms
D. The Outlaws of the Marsh
E. None
(1) On the completion of these novels, there’re 129 interviewees have read at least one of them. 25% of all interviewees have read all of the 4 books, and 9.6% haven’t read any of them.
As for the complete reading rate, A Dream of Red Mansion wins first place by 73.5%. Romance of Three Kingdoms gains 57.4%. The Outlaws of the Marsh and A Journey to the West get 43.4% and 41.0%, respectively.
(2) On the corresponding TV series, we got 122 valid responds. 80.3% of all students have watched all of them, and no one has missed them completely. Compared to the results showed in (1), the percentage of interviewees who have watched all four TV series (80.3%) beats the percentage of students who have read 4 books completely (25.0%) by a large margin. We further got to know in the interview, that many people began to read these books after they watched these TV shows, or at the same time. It is clear that the TV series has a great effect on the reading. As for the watching rate of the 4 works, A Journey to the West hits an amazing number of 97.5%, namely, everyone who has read the book has also watched the TV series. The following one is A Dream of Red Mansion with 91.8% of watching rate. Both the other 2 works have a watching rate of 86.9%.
Section 3 Modern and Contemporary Literature
For modern literature, we are interested in the 1-2 writers who have been most widely read.
80.8% of the interviewees include Lu Xun, Zhang Ailing, Shen Congwen, and Lao She in their list. Besides, Zhou Zuoren, Zhang Tianyi, Mu Dan and Feng Zhi. Generally speaking, novelist is more than essay writer or poet, but the distribution is not that bias.
For contemporary literature, we chose the reading and acceptance of “17-year literature” and contemporary poetry as targets from the perspectives of both width and depth. We selected Red Rocks, Song of the Youth, Protecting Yan’an, Sea of Forest and Land of Snow and Starting an Undertaking as options for interviewees.
1. Reading and acceptance of “17-year literature”
Among all 136 interviewees, 28.7% of them haven’t read any of the 5 books. For the 97 students who claimed they have read at least one of them, 59.8% have read Song of the Youth. About half of them have read Red Rocks and Starting an Undertaking. 36.1% have read Sea of Forest and Land of Snow. And only 5.2% have read Protecting Yan’an. From the amount perspective, 39.2% have read 1 of the 5 books. 30.9% have read two of them. 15.5% have read three, 11.3% have read four, and 3.1% have read all 5 books. The reading rate decreases against the increasing number of books. More than half interviewees read less than two books. It can be concluded that “17-year literature” is not widely accepted.
2. Reading and acceptance of contemporary poetry
To differentiate subject preference and object reading content, we set two separate options, namely, “favorite poet” and “most familiar poet”. The outcome goes as follows.
There’re 96 valid responds out of 136 interviewees. 9 of them didn’t give specific answers. Within the 90 interviewees who have specific the name of their favorite poets, another 9 of them gave names of poets in modern times rather than contemporary. It can be concluded that many of them have a vague understanding of “contemporary poetry”. For the ones who gave the correspondent relevant answers, the number of “favorite poets” per one single person hit its peak at 6, and the number of “most familiar poets” per person came to 5. All the other answers were less than 3.
The top 5 poets in “favorite” category are Hai Zi, Gu Cheng, Bei Dao, Shu Ting, and Xi Murong. Other mentioned poets include Yu Guangzhong, Xi Chuan, Liao Weitang, Hu Xudong, Zang Li, Shi Zhi, Huang Canran, Ma Hua, Yang Daguo, Yu Jian, Luo Fu, Luo Ying, Xia Yu, Duo Duo, Mang Ke, Yang Lian, Zhang Zao, Xiao Kaiyu, Chang Yao, and Mao Zedong. Clearly, most of the interviewees prefer those poets who have been acknowledged already.
However, “favorite” does not necessarily lead to “familiar”. We further investigate the familiar-favorite ratio. In the “favorite” category, Hai Zi, Gu Cheng, Bei Dao, Shu Ting, and Xi Murong were mentioned by 40, 21, 14, 8, 6 interviewees respectively. And under the “familiar” category, they were mentioned by 20, 11, 4, 5, 8 students respectively. From the familiar-favorite ratio perspective, Xi Morong won the first place. Following her came Shu Ting. And although Hai Zi is more popular than Gu Cheng, more interviewees saw Gu Cheng as more familiar than Hai Zi.
Section 4 Internet Reading
According to several country-wide reading survey, internet and e-book reading has been constantly increasing with time. The 5th “National Reading Survey” showed that internet reading rate was 44.9%, increased from 27.8% in 2005 by 17.1%. Almost 20% of the public who had a habit of reading also read e-book. Mobile daily and e-magazine both have more than 2 million readers. After entering college, students have better condition because of computer courses and more internet resources. Therefore, college student is a group of highly representative. For PKU Chinese Department, most students have their personal computers. Except public internet space such as BDWM BBS and Chinese Forum, internet literature draws more and more attention as an important literal and cultural phenomenon. Hence the attention towards internet reading from students in Chinese Department contains both entertaining and academic reasons.
This section at first investigates the view frequency of every possible internet space, and then focuses on the literature website. At last it comes to the internet literature reading survey.
We set a chart to investigate the view frequency of those internet spaces which are possible to contain internet literature.
The first possible form is e-book. Most of them are based on paper books, but some of them became famous before being printed. There are more than 65.4% of interviewees chose “Occasionally”, and then comes “Several times a week”, “Once in several weeks”, “Never”, and seldom “Everyday”.
Then we moved on to the E-magazine. Except some E-magazines are based on paper ones, many of them exist only online. These E-magazines win hearts by beautiful pictures, peaceful music, friendly operating panel, and convenient links. As showed in the survey, “Several times a week” and “Once in several weeks” have increased. Because magazine updates in weekly or monthly basis, there’s seldom “Everyday” choice. On the other side, since it spreads through E-mail post or special website, more people chose “Never” than last question.
Blogs and journals have been very popular for recent years. It even has created a brand new way of writing and draw academic attention. Southeast University has set an independent Internet Literature Research Center.
Journal refers to the blog-like articles posted on QQ space, MSN space and etc. For the college students, Xiaonei has been a special website since 2005. With a huge number of registered users, it includes most college into its network. The “journal” tab in Xiaonei becomes extremely popular because of its convenient. Students can post essays, take notes, and share articles, and by doing all these, they get in touch with their old school mates. The extremely low amount of “Never” and extraordinarily high amount of “Everyday” has best illustrated the popularity. The sum percentage of “Everyday” and “Several times a week” has reached 52.3%. No one can deny the importance of blogs and journals to the interviewees.
Blog and journal varies in content and form. It is difficult to judge as “literature”. However, many of them indeed are the serious literature creation. But the other dairies and comments are somehow vague to judge. This issue needs further discussion in relevant academic field.
The following is the literature societies in forums and BBS. Here forum refers to those open to the whole society and BBS refers to those open to colleges only. Literature societies refer to the societies set for literature sharing and discussion within these forms and BBS. These societies are for those who have a specific interest in certain fields. Hence “Occasionally” and “Never” together takes more than 70%.
In BDWM BBS, literature societies include “We Club” “Wusi” “World Literature” “Bei She”, and etc. These are either students’ societies or topic societies. 8.5% of interviewees view them “Everyday”, which is the second highest frequency among all internet literature spaces. That’s also a characteristic of students in Chinese Department.
At last, we investigated the popularity of professional literature website, and found the frequency fell further. The last two options in sum took a percentage of 72.3%. Since professional literature websites always have their own way of operation, many of them have become the platform of certain kinds of internet literature. This further limits the number of viewers.
To follow up, we added an subjective item requesting interviewees to list the professional literature website they always visit. 37 answers were collected. 6 of them mentioned “Rong Shu Xia”. Another 6 mentioned “Jin Jiang Literature”. 4 of them mentioned “Starting Chinese”. 3 of them mentioned “Novel Reading”. 2 brought up “Ling Shi Island”, and another 2 “Tianya Online”. There are also 2 students mentioned “Xiao Xiang Shu Yuan” and “PKU Chinese Forum”, respectively. Other websites brought up included “Bai Lu Shu Yuan”, “Douban”, “Hong Xiu Tian Xiang”, “Ju Lu”, “Kanunu”, “Kuai Yan Kan Shu”, “Novels from Ming and Qing Dynasty”, “Traditional Academics”, “Piao Xue Arts”, “Xi Lu”, “Si Yue Tian”, “Bai Ma Shu Wu”, “Poetry Life”, “Sina Reading”, “Romance Novel”, “Chinese Language”, and “Left Bank Literature”.
For the last question for this chapter, we investigated the content preference of internet literature. We asked the interviewees to list the top 3 topics they preferred in the list below. There’re 64 interviewees who read internet literature, takes 47.8% of the sample. In the first position, “City and Romance” is the most popular choice with a percentage of 16.4%. The following choices are “Novel with other existing characters” and “History and Military”.
Since there’re 14 interviewees ranked their top 1 only and 27 interviewees ranked their top 2. So we use data instead of graph to illustrate them. For the second position, “Chivalrous and Mysterious” occupies 30%. “Magical” occupies 18.0%. “City and Romance” takes 16.0%. “History and Military” takes 14.0%. “Science and Transnatural” takes 10.0%. “Japanese aesthetism” takes 8.0%. And “Novel with other existing characters” takes 4.0%.
For the third position, 9 interviewees chose “History and Military”. And 7 of them chose “Chivalrous and Mysterious” and “Novel with other existing characters”, respectively. We can conclude that students in Chinese Department have various concerns in reading internet literature. For all the internet spaces which are possible to emerge internet literature, blog and journals are most widely accepted. A large percentage of students view professional literature website frequently with a special interest in a special content. Topic of “City and Romance” is the most popular one, and new topics as “Japanese aesthetism” have drawn many attention. This phenomenon is somehow related to the male-female ratio in Chinese Department.
Chapter 3 Factors that Affect Reading
The last objective question is a top 3-ranking one to investigate the factors that affect reading.
Since there’re 17 students simply chose the first position and 22 didn’t choose the third position, the graph is only prepared for the 1st position. In the graph, the first factor is still “Courses recommendation”, which is compatible with the reason for increasing reading content mentioned previously. It can be concluded that this factor is essential to the students in Chinese Department. The second largest group is “Independent”. Besides, “Writer’s notability”, “Others’ introduction” and “Mass media and internet” also play an important role. And “Ranking in awards”, “Ranking and promotion of bookstores” and “Package and appearance” are not very important factors, indicating that interviewees emphasize more on the content of the book.
For the second position, top 3 choices include “Others’ introduction” (35.9%), “Courses recommendation” (30.1%), and “Writer’s notability” (15.5%). Other choices are not of great competence. The top 3 affecting factors in the third position are exactly the same with the ones in the 2nd position but with a different proportion, namely, 32.6%, 17.9% and 16.8%.
It’s noticeable that since this question is the last one of objective part, 13 interviewees missed this question, which affects the exactness of the result. The questionnaire designing should be improved next time.
Chapter 4 Purpose and Effect of Reading
To further discuss the affecting factors of reading, 3 subjective questions are given as follow. The first question is “Why do your read literature works?” 14 responds were missed in 132 interviewees, which makes this question achieved the highest answering ratio. And almost every interviewee gives more than one answer. The main responds are as follows.
“Course requirement” has again occupied the first place with 41 interviewees’ mentioning. The second popular reason is “Entertaining”, and follows by “Personal interest”, “Enlarge knowledge base”, and “Self-cultivating”. Other mentioned items include “Increasing experience”, “Getting inspired”, “Aesthetics appreciation”, and “Seeking sympathetic response”, etc. And two reasons with Chinese Department’s characteristics have been mentioned as “Writing preparation” and “Skill learning”. Those mentioned reasons out of the list include “No specific reason” (4), “Making full use of time” (3), “Seeking common topics with others” (1), “Job hunting” (1), and “Imagination” (1).
The second question focus on the effect of reading. It goes as “Is there any works or plot you read in university has affected you significantly?”
49 interviewees gave specific works or character, which took 36% of the sample. Although some other interviewees might have forgotten on the spot, the percentage is still quite low. We found out through interview that most influential literature works were read before college. In college, compulsory reading and text analysis may decrease the interests towards the reading material. And besides, personality is almost fully shaped in college. It’s more difficult to influence a student in college than one in middle school.
The 3rd question is “What’s the value of classical ancient literature in modern times? And how is it relevant to you?”
105 responds were collected, and main ideas are given as follows.
1. Cultural value: Classical ancient literature has preserved precious Chinese culture. It contains important cultural and historical value and plays an important part in understanding, inheriting and promoting Chinese culture. It is essential to national confident. Many interviewees described its importance by using “essence”, “root” and “origin”.
2. Artistic value: Classical ancient literature is the “form of literature” and “source of topics”. Contemporary literature should always learn from it.
3. Linguistic value: Classical ancient literature preserves the beauty of ancient Chinese language.
4. Ideological value: Modern Chinese people could learn their ancestors’ life and thoughts via reading classical ancient literature, and use it to rescue them from their own predicament. Classical ancient literature plays an important role in self-cultivating to achieve peace in mind. It can be used to defend the materialized world and cultivate national character.
Most interviewees have realized the important value of classical ancient literature. However not too much treatise with depth was given, it’s partly because the form of questionnaire has limited further illustration.
In-depth interview helped us to discuss this issue further. And one junior student has provided comments as follow. “Those spiritual things are difficult to realize when you acquire them or lose. I think classical ancient literature is one of these kinds. If we admit that literature is a reflection of people’s life and spirit, classical ancient literature shouldn’t be left far away from us, although modern people may see it as way too elegant to approach. We cannot deny the separation of ancient and modern Chinese language, and therefore classical ancient literature may seem far from our life. But those thoughts which can be shared by souls will never die. It is difficult to find out how to inherit and promote it properly. And we may not be able to find the answer until we fully understand its value. But there is no denying that the ancient China had been such a beautiful place and ancient Chinese language had express the real dynamic vitality of our ancestors. I am thinking, the confident of this nation should have its root. And classical ancient literature should be part of it.”
As for the influence of classical ancient literature on individuals, main opinions are selected as follows.
1. Enabling Self-cultivating
2. Inspiring thoughts
3. Providing life attitude
4. Enhancing academic capacity
5. Fulfilling personal interest
6. Entertaining
Among the 6 opinions above, the 1st one represented most interviewee’s attitude. Generally speaking, most interviewees have emphasized on self-cultivating effect of classical ancient literature, including spirit, personality, artistic creation and academic capacity.
Part IV Major Conclusions and Suggestions
This investigation mainly focused on the scope of reading of Chinese Language and Literature major students in Peking University, major conclusions are as follows:
More than 90% of the interviewee spend more than 1 hour in reading per day, most of them would underline key paragraphs or take notes when reading, combining close-reading and skimming.
In terms of the source of the book, borrowing from the library is ranked first, also buying from bookstores, borrowing from friends, and read online versions are all main channels of getting access to the book.
In terms of content, for readings in the spare time, literature, leisure and entertainment, history and philosophy are among the most popular ones. In the three eras of Chinese literature, most students put modern literature as the most-read; followed by contemporary literature; ancient literature has fewest students put as their most-read.
Within ancient literature, almost half of the interviewee like poem, Ci, and Qu the most, followed by novels. Su, Shi and Dreams of the Red Mansion are respectively the most favorite author / work under the two genres. In general, for poems, except Su, Shi, the most popular poets are all from Tang Dynasty. Among the classics in pre-Qin and East-/West-Han Dynasties, The Analects, Mencius, Chuang Tsu, and Tao Te Ching are among the pre-Qin Dynasty classics that have been completely read. One fourth of the interviewees have completely read The Four Classics, even there are influences of the TV drama based on these novels, but the overall condition is optimistic, among them, 73.5% have completely read Dreams of the Red Mansion.
Within modern and contemporary literature, Lu, Xun is still the most-read author during the college years of the interviewees. The Seventeen-Year Literature is read mostly due to course requirements, but overall it’s not widely read. For contemporary poetry, many interviewees admit they “don’t like it”, but Hai Zi, Gu Cheng, Bei Dao, Shu Ting, Xi Murong and many other famous poets in the 80s are still popular among the interviewees, i.e., majors in Chinese Language and Literature, but necessary understanding of these poets are not in place.
As for online reading, most of the interviewees are more used to the traditional paper copies. While online reading (including online magazines and journals, literature section on BBS, blogs, and other spaces where online literature exists), are taking a role in the overall reading trend that we can’t neglect. Online literature portals – qidian.com, readnovel.com, and the like, and some genres made popular on the Internet – Fantasy Literature, BL Literature, and the like, are having considerable readers. This phenomenon, along with more complicated issues behind it, is worth further investigation.
The reason of reading are mostly quoted as “for course requirement”, other major reasons include “learn knowledge, broaden horizon, self-cultivation” and so on. “Honing literature appreciation skills and prepare for writing” are also reasons for some of the interviewees.
Course requirements of the Chinese Language and Literature Department have a major influence on literature reading of most of the students. Entering this department made a significant shift in reading habits of a lot of the interviewees, not only in the scope and content of reading, but also in depth, method, writing and book collection. Being a major in this department is the key reason that leads to the variety of reading as discusses above. But we shouldn’t neglect that for those students who chose this department themselves, it’s their existing reading that brought them here.
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龙协涛《文学阅读学》北京大学出版社 2004
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《光明日报》2008年8月26日
鲁捷,王粤钦《论网络文学概念及待征》《新疆师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)》2005年3月第26卷第l期
李瑞芳,张英,程慕胜《清华大学非英语专业学生课外阅读情况调查研究》,《外语界》2004年第2期
王岳川《网络文学:理性视域中的学理阐释》,《中南大学学报(社会科学版)》第10卷
袁平夫《网络文学的现状与出路》《名作欣赏》2007年8月
郑惠生《关于当前大学生喜欢阅读哪类课外书的调查研究》《江西教育学院学报(社会科学)》2005年4月第26卷第2期
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由于“网络文学”的概念在学术界尚未达成共识,本文采用较宽泛的界定。网络文学是“网民在网络上发表的供网民阅读的文学。”见 鲁捷,王粤钦《论网络文学概念及待征》