Chinese Program Director Departs

Shengli Feng, director of Harvard’s Chinese Language Program and founder of the University’s first Mandarin summer immersion program, is leaving Harvard this fall after seven years to teach at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Feng said he chose to accept the position at CUHK—whose “cultural and academic atmosphere” jives with his teaching philosophy—after Harvard decided not to match the offer.

“I’m very happy to work here but [CUHK] offered a better situation,” said Feng, adding that Harvard has not yet found a replacement for him.

Wai-Yee Li, a professor of Chinese literature, said that “[Harvard’s] Chinese program ranks among the best in the country because of his leadership.” Lijuan Feng, a teaching assistant and drill instructor in the East Asian Languages and Civilizations department, said that “we don’t know what our department will be [like]” following Feng’s departure.

In the past year, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has limited the number of new faculty members it hires due to financial stress.

In November, FAS Dean Michael D. Smith said that he would work to reduce the size of the faculty, whose salaries constitute a large portion of the FAS budget.

FAS spokesman Jeff A. Neal did not respond to requests for comment on Feng’s departure.

Feng said that while CUHK’s better financial offer played an important role in driving his decision, Hong Kong’s location—which serves to fuse eastern and western cultures—is also appealing, as it provides him with an ideal environment to pursue research on Chinese linguistics.

Furthermore, Feng’s wife and daughter have both already secured jobs in Hong Kong.

Feng has been central to the development of Harvard’s Chinese language program, having created the Harvard-Beijing Academy summer program, a nine week-long intensive language study program that is regarded as among the best of its kind. He also introduced a fifth-year level course to the Chinese language program at the College.

In the past decade, the number of students enrolled in Chinese courses has surpassed that for Japanese courses in a department that now has 20 language instructors—many of whom Feng drew from China through HBA.

Born in Beijing in 1955, Feng grew up during the tumult of China’s Cultural Revolution, in which Mao Zedong’s efforts to renew the nation’s spirit of revolution and purge intellectuals resulted in mass starvation and economic disaster.

“The more you had knowledge, the more you [were] counterrevolutionary,” Feng said of the mindset of the time. According to Mao, Feng added, “knowledge from books [was] bullshit. Knowledge from projects [was] real.”

After he completed middle school, Feng became a math teacher for middle school students while secretly and illicitly studying advanced Chinese with a former teacher. Feng then enrolled in college after the Cultural Revolution ended, later completing a master’s degree and traveling to the United States to complete a doctoral program in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Feng’s dynamic educational and cultural upbringing may have shaped his own pedagogical approach. He has cultivated a reputation among students for being a rigorous instructor who motivates students to master Chinese.

”His unrelenting demand of the students is in some ways pretty touching,” said Suneel K. Chakravorty ’11, a former HBA student, noting that Feng calls on students in class to repeat even slightly mispronounced words.

Through Feng’s tenure, Chakravorty added, Harvard’s Chinese program has “been established as an effective and efficient language machine.”

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Elyssa A.L. Spitzer can be reached at spitzer@fas.harvard.edu.