The Chinese Educational Idioms That the Chinese Shall Live By

With the conviction that formulaic expressions in a language are carriers of stable thought patterns of its culture, the paper conducts a thematic analysis of Chinese educational idioms with the goal of exploring the traditional Chinese educational values reflected in the Chinese language use. Altogether, about 100 Chinese idioms that pertain to teaching, learning and parenting are identified from a Chinese Chengyu (idioms) dictionary. Findings of this study challenge the common practice of borrowing Western pedagogical discourses to justify curriculum change initiatives in China, arguing that the traditional Chinese educational discourses should be retained in order to secure a strong cultural identity for young generations.


INTRODUCTION
The changing pedagogical discourse in China in the past few decades has been overwhelmingly informed by Western pedagogical ideas, which can be seen as the influence of a globalisation process in educational development (Huang 2004).The change towards a Western pedagogical discourse has resulted in some tension with the local Chinese traditional culture of education (Liu 2016) that has remained rather stable to a large extent.Underlying this paper is the philosophical position that language shapes thinking and behaviour.In particular, historically stable elements of a language encrypt and reveal cultural values.As such, this study analyses old Chinese Chengyu phrases to understand deeply embedded cultural attitudes and perspectives regarding education in China.The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that many seemingly new Western approaches to education borrowed by China, such as student-centred learning and constructivist learning, are in fact already embedded in the traditional Chinese culture.Furthermore, the paper contends that China's propensity for Western borrowing has simultaneously caused and been caused by a lack of cultural confidence around traditional Chinese modes of education due to the 'Chinese Century of Shame'.
China Report 60, 1 (2024): 7-21 values, different from the values espoused in the official pedagogical discourse, are the folk educational culture covertly subscribed to and abided by through everyday language use by parents and educators.

CHINESE CHENGYU IDIOMS
A Chengyu phrase is a form of fossilised idiomatic expression in China that is mostly derived from Chinese classical literature and is used prevalently in society today (Wu 1995).There are about 3,500 frequently used Chengyu phrases in the Chinese language today (Ni and Yao 1990).Chinese Chengyu phrases seem to meet all three criteria of idioms in the English literature: institutionalisation, lexicogrammatical fixedness and non-compositionality (Moon 1998).Chengyu phrases have been historically institutionalised as lexical items of the Chinese language.Chengyu phrases demonstrate lexicogrammatical fixedness, with most of them carrying four stable Chinese characters.And Chengyu phrases have the property of compositionality whose meanings cannot be constructed from its parts.Lu (2008) believes that Chengyu phrases in Chinese have two more properties than idioms as defined in English literature.Based on an analysis of the sources of 5,500 Chengyu phrases in a Chinese Chengyu dictionary, Xiao (1987) found that the majority of them have very ancient origins, with 68% originated from classical literary works written during the Chunqiu and Zhanguo Period (771-476 bc) and the Qin and Han Dynasties (475 bc-220 ad), 15% from Wei and Jin Dynasties (220-589 ad), 9% from Sui and Tang Dynasties (581-907 ad), 6% from Song Dynasty (960-1279 ad) and 2% from Yuan, Ming andQing Dynasties (1271-1912).The second additional quality is their strong cultural references.According to Lu (2008), Chengyu is the most culturally encrypted linguistic unit in the Chinese language.Chengyu phrases in Chinese, given their stability and longevity, are good carriers of the Chinese traditional culture, just as fossil rocks carry good evidence of ancient lives.
The distant origins and the prevalence of their use make the Chinese Chengyu idioms a very special and interesting case to study the relationship between language and culture.Their existence serves to show that some important elements of Chinese culture have stayed stable over the long stretches of Chinese history, despite social and political ups and downs.According to the Chinese scholar Lin (1935), Chinese culture has demonstrated resilience and stability throughout Chinese history, and this is due to the tight family network in Chinese Confucian tradition.According to Jaques (2012), much of what characterised Chinese society and lives in history remains strikingly true and evident today, despite Mao's effort to sweep away Confucian traditions during the Cultural Revolution.For this reason, an archaeological analysis of the archaic expressions in the Chinese language today would be a valuable endeavour to show the implied educational discourse deeply embedded in the Chinese people's minds.

METHODOLOGY
What can we learn about Chinese educational values from the Chinese educational idioms?This is the research question we raise in this study.We take a greater interest in the most frequently used Chengyu idioms in the Chinese language today, as the frequency of use may indicate the strength of the messages in speakers' belief systems, either conscious or unconscious.For this reason, we have chosen to use the 4,100 most frequently used Chengyu items included in a dictionary called The Dictionary of Most Frequently Used Chengyu Expressions (Guo and Hu 2010) as our corpus.The educational Chengyu idioms are identified and analysed through intercode consensus between two authors, both speaking Chinese as the first language (Kurasaki 2000;O'Connor and Joffe 2020).Altogether, 103 Chinese Chengyu idioms are chosen among the 4,100 entries that carry clear and direct educational themes, such as education, teaching, learning and parenting.
The 103 Chengyu idioms were subjected to a rigorous thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006).The goal was to put them into a few manageable thematic categories.The resulting four categories are taken as four major aspects of the traditional Chinese culture in education.About 40 Chengyu idioms in the pool of 103 were selected as examples to support the four themes in the presentation of findings on the basis of the saliency of meaning and the frequency of use.The translation of these Chengyu idioms is provided by the two authors.In translation, we strive for more literal translation to achieve accuracy and clarity in meaning.What is often lost in translation is the aesthetic style that is created by the compact four (occasionally more) characters in each idiom as shown below in the Findings section, and as a result, the English translation may sound plain and less sophisticated compared to the original Chinese versions.

FINDINGS
In this section, the Chinese educational culture embedded in Chinese Chengyu idioms is presented in the four categories/themes identified in this study.They are the Chinese attitudes towards education, the desirable pedagogical approaches, the roles of teachers and the roles of learners.Each theme is discussed by connecting exemplar Chengyu idioms in the category into a coherent narrative.

The Chinese educational values
A most important educational value enshrined in the Chinese Chengyu idioms is the strong commitment to education.'十年树木，百年树人 (It takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to educate a people).'To the Chinese, education requires longterm dedicated efforts.In order to uplift the whole people, '有教无类 (Education China Report 60, 1 (2024): 7-21 knows no class distinction).'This equitable dimension of the Chinese educational culture has been honoured by the Chinese Imperial Exam policy in history from the Sui Dynasty (580-618) to the Qing Dynasty , in which all Chinese males, irrespective of their origin, could take part in the exams to select government officials (Lin 1935).Clearly, equity here is limited to social equity, not gender equity.
Another Chengyu idiom known to every household in China is ' 孟母三迁 (Mencius's mother moving home three times)' in order to find a better environment for his son's education.This shows the Chinese parental commitment to children's education at the family level.This value seems to be still well practised in China.There is a real estate concept in China today, called 'School Zone Property'.Chinese parents are willing to pay much higher prices to purchase properties close to a good school so that their children are eligible to go to the school within the parchment district.There are also 'astronaut families' wherein the mothers move with their children to a Western country to access the perceived better education overseas, leaving the fathers in China alone to make money to support them (Waters 2002).All Chinese parents '望子成龙 (Expect their children to become dragons)', and are willing to make any sacrifices to make that happen.The Chinese call themselves the descendants of the dragon, so a dragon is not a monster in Chinese culture.
There are good rationales provided for the strong commitment to education.'玉不 琢, 不成器 (The jade stone won't become beautiful-looking figurines without being sculpted).'The metaphorical meaning is that children would not become valuable people without going through rigorous education.Here 'sculpt' may not sound like a comfortable word to readers in the West, as it suggests painful interference to children's growth.But to the Chinese, this may be a necessary process.' 父严子孝 (A strict father, a filial son ).' Filial piety, the virtue of respecting elders and seeking opportunities to repay elders' sacrifices, is a highly rated quality in the Confucian tradition.In order to turn children into people with filial values, strict parenting is required.'It is the father's fault if the child is not educated (子不教, 父之过).'A father is liable for the failure of a child if he is not strict and does not educate the child properly.
There are five traditional social relationships in Confucianism: Sovereign-subject, father-son, elder-younger brother, husband-wife and friend-friend (Fung 1948).Three sets of the relationships are family relations.According to Confucianism, father should love son and son should listen to father; elder brother should love young brother and younger brother should listen to elder brother; husband should love wife and wife should listen to husband.Then the family will be at peace.The sovereign-subject and friend-friend relationships are not family relations, but they are taken as family relations.So, the family relationship extends to the social relationship in the sense of '家国 (Family state)'.If the sovereign loves the subject and the subject listens to the sovereign, the older friend shows good leadership and the younger buddy shows good followership, the society will be at peace.In the patriarchal society, the father is given the highest authority and plays a central role in the education of children.

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Success in education requires respect for teachers in the whole society.'尊师重道 (Honor the teacher and respect his teaching ).'This is considered a key to national prosperity.Teachers are to be revered by the whole society.'一日为师，终身为父 (A teacher for a day, a father for a lifetime).'One shall respect a teacher as if he is the father.Today the women's position is lifted, but the parental role as a whole is still paramount in children's education.An utmost respect to parents is expected of all children.The respect to the teacher is analogised here to the respect to the parents.This value may be disputed today as students are supposed to develop critical thinking abilities.Too much respect out of students for the teachers in a hierarchical relationship may become a cultural barrier for students to challenge teachers and debate ideas with teachers.This is one of the misunderstandings of the Chinese educational culture.We will discuss teacher-student relationships in a more detailed manner later.

The Chinese pedagogical approaches
'因材施教 (Conduct teaching in accordance with talents).'This Chengyu idiom stresses that teachers should teach different students in different ways according to their different abilities.There is another very similar idiom: '因势利导 (Provide guidance in the direction of where things are going).'This idiom suggests that teachers should follow students' interest, aspirations and styles of learning, and provide guidance accordingly.Both of these idioms strongly emphasise 'student-centredness' in teaching.Different students have different capabilities and interests, and, thus teaching approaches should be different to meet their needs.The student-centredness here may complement the previous 'jade sculpting' metaphor, suggesting that sculpting has to follow the shape and texture of the stone.Some Chengyu idioms point to the experiential approach in teaching, which is often missing in Western perceptions of Chinese teaching.'言传身教 (Transmit knowledge in language and demonstrate it through action).'This pedagogical idiom stresses the importance of teaching through demonstrations and examples in addition to verbal instruction.'读万卷书, 行万里路(Read ten thousand volumes of books; travel ten thousand kilometers of road).'This idiom stresses the importance of learning second-hand knowledge from books as well as getting first-hand experiential knowledge from the real world.These two idioms may reverse people's impression that Chinese education is characterised by didacticism in style and memorisation in approach.And this idiom, '寓教于乐 (Immerse teaching in fun activities)', may serve to change people's impression that Chinese education is no fun and all drudgery, given its strict and stringent nature.
'读书百遍，其义自现 (Read a book a hundred times, and the meaning would emerge by itself )'.There is another rather similar idiom: '读书破万卷, 下笔如有神 (Read over ten thousand volumes of books, and when writing, it would feel like you are aided by God ).'These two idioms point to the immersive and inductive approach to learning.'学而不思则罔, 思而不学则殆(Learning without thinking will leave China Report 60, 1 (2024): 7-21 one still confused; thinking without learning will lead one into difficulty too).'This idiom shows that both knowledge accumulation and critical thinking are important in learning.'不愤不启, 不悱不发 (Only provide guidance to students after they have done their own thinking)', and the goal in teaching is to enable students to '举一反 三 (Go from one to three).' Again this may sound different from the impression of the Chinese style of teaching as direct instruction for teachers and rote memorisation for students.

The roles of teachers
There are many Chengyu idioms that pertain to the roles of teachers in Chinese culture.In the first place, teachers need to be competent content area experts."能者为 师 (Those who are capable serve as teachers).'It is often the pronounced desire of all governments and societies to recruit the smartest and the most capable people into the teaching force, but the remuneration for the teaching profession seldom reflects that.This is true in China as well as most of the Western countries.There is another Chengyu idiom that has been widely used to refer to the classical roles of teachers in China.A teacher is supposed to '传道授业解惑 (Spread philosophies of sages, impart knowledge of professions, and resolve any doubts from students).'Teachers are supposed to help students gain wisdom and poise for a good life, knowledge and skills for a successful career, and answer any questions that may be raised by students.The know-it-all kind of expectation is very high as a professional standard for teachers.The emphasis on teachers' content area knowledge is reflected in teacher education programming in China, where teachers are not trained in Faculties of Education, but in Faculties of content areas.
There are a few Chengyu idioms that deal with teacher-student relationships.In the first place, teachers need to be treated with utmost respect and dignity, as shown in the idiom '师道尊严(Respect is the way of teaching).'In order to respect the teacher's teaching, we have to respect the teachers.This makes sense when we observe how students refuse to learn a subject when they do not like the teacher teaching that subject.In order to earn respect, teachers need to '为人师表(Behave in a way that deserves people's respect and be a good role model).'But the teacher-student relationship does not have to be necessarily hierarchical, as indicated by the respect required.'良师益友 (Good mentor, valuable friend).'A good teacher in this sense is a good mentor and a valuable friend at the same time.Being a good mentor and a valuable friend to students may be another way to earn the respect from students.Still another idiom, '教学相长(Teaching and learning grow each other)', shows that teaching is not necessarily one-directional, but mutual and reciprocal.
Some idioms are related to teachers' professional dedication to the teaching cause.'耳提面命((Tell students what to do) face to face; (remind them by) lifting their ears).'This is to be understood figuratively as a sincere, earnest and tender way of teaching.A literal understanding would verge on physical punishment.A central China Report 60, 1 (2024): 7-21 display of teachers' professionalism is the following Chengyu idiom that has been used frequently in the Chinese language to praise teachers: '诲人不倦 (Persuade and influence people tirelessly).'Patience in working with students and never giving up on them is a highly valued quality of teachers.Good teachers are the ones who '谆谆 教诲 (Teach students in the most patient way)' and who '循循善诱 (Guide students in the most gentle manner).'By all means, teachers shall refrain from '拔苗助长 (Uproot the young plants to help them grow).'These idioms are demonstrations of the professional qualities of good teachers in the Chinese culture: sincere, patient, gentle and with tireless dedication to students' growth and development.
The impact of good teachers on students is summarised in the following Chengyu idiom with powerful metaphorical references to the natural world.The best teachers are the '春风化雨 (Spring breeze and nurturing rain)' that help grow and transform lives.We have found two ways to translate the American teacher movie Dead Poet Society into Chinese.One is a literal translation '死亡诗社 (Dead Poet Society)', and the other is a figurative translation, using exactly the above metaphorical idiom: '春风化雨 (Spring breeze and nurturing rain).'It might have sacrificed the humour in the original English name, but the impact of a good teacher is well retained.The best way to describe the achievement of a good teacher after a long career in teaching is to have '桃李满天下 (Peaches and plums scattered everywhere under the sky).' Metaphorically, young students are seen as seedlings, and with the tender nurturing of the teacher breeze and teacher rain, they grow into tall trees, bearing peaches and plums.The fruits signify the contributions their students are making to society.

The roles of students
What are students' roles in education?Students shall have strong self-motivation to learn, as shown in the following Chengyu idiom: '凿壁偷光 (Read with light from a neighbor's house by drilling a hole in the wall).'This is based on a story about a child who was too poor to afford light oil and had to read at night with light from a neighbor's house through a hole in the wall.The moral is that one shall find ways to study despite poverty or any other adverse life conditions.To avoid drowsiness when studying, a good student is supposed to '头悬梁，锥刺股 (have hair tied to the house beam and bones pricked with a needle).'The hair tied to the beam would keep the head up when falling asleep.With a needle pricking through the flesh to the bone, one can stay more alert with the pain.This idiom, metaphorically speaking, stresses the strong work ethics expected out of students.Good students may be so engaged in their learning that they would '废寝忘食 (Neglect sleeping and forget eating ).' Modesty is another important quality expected out of students.'笨鸟先飞 (A slow bird shall fly first).'But in a culture where modesty is the rule of law, all students, smart or not, should take themselves as 'slow birds' and 'fly early'.'孺子可教 (A humble, respectful child is a teachable child ).' Modesty is expected of all students.One important reason for staying humble is that '学无止境 (Learning has no limit ).'

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A modest learner shall learn from everyone around.'三人行，必有我师 (For any three persons walking together, I am bound to be able to find teachers among them).'For this reason, '圣人无常师 (Sages do not have stable teachers).'Sages are accomplished scholars, and the reason for their accomplishments is that they have learned from all people, not just one or two teachers.Good students and scholars would '不耻下问 (even consult down with people who are low in social status and shy in intellectual attainment).' There are educational Chengyu idioms that denote goals in learning.The goal in learning is to be '满腹经纶 (Full of knowledge and ideas well organized like finely sorted silk threads)', and '出口成章 (when talking, their words turn immediately into well-organized and well-argued articles)'.They can surpass their teachers in intellectual accomplishment, just like '青出于蓝，而胜于蓝 (The color blue is taken from the Liaolan grass, but bluer than the Liaolan grass).'If students are able to achieve the above, their '金榜题名 (Names will appear on top of the golden list of the Imperial Exam result)' and they are able to serve the country as government officials.In their high positions, they would be able to '学以致用 (Turn what they learned into good use )' to benefit the society.The meritocratic Imperial Exam system in history has convinced Chinese students that '万般皆下品，惟有读书高 (Everything else is inferior, education is the only lofty pursuit),' and '书中自有颜如玉，书中自有黄金屋 (In books you will find beauties with complexions like jade, and houses made of gold).'

DISCUSSION
The Chinese education idioms analysed in this paper have revealed the Chinese educational culture subscribed to by the Chinese language speakers in four major areas.The Chinese educational culture is characterised by such values as strong governmental commitment to education, strong parental responsibility for children's success in education, and strong societal respect for the teaching profession.The Chinese educational culture also suggests such pedagogical orientations as individualised student-centred teaching, heuristic question-based teaching and experiential inductive teaching.There are high expectations from teachers as content experts, good models, good friends and lifelong learners who teach patiently, gently and tirelessly.There are also high expectations from learners who shall be hard working, self-motivated, modest and who shall pursue education earnestly in life, aim high in official careers to serve the country and to honour their teachers with achievements in life.
Bringing the four themes together, the traditional Chinese educational culture encrypted in the Chinese formulaic expressions in this study points to the richness and comprehensiveness of the Chinese educational culture as a dialectic system.It has high expectations of students' educational attainment but requires teachers to follow the students' interests, aptitudes and ways of learning.It requires students' utmost respect China Report 60, 1 (2024): 7-21 for teachers, and it requires teachers' utmost devotion to teaching.It expects teachers to be experts in their fields, but good mentors and friends with students.It expects students to work hard and aim high, but stay humble no matter how accomplished they are.But most importantly, the Chinese educational culture is firm on goals, but gentle in approaches.Many signature Western approaches in education perceived in China, such as student-centred learning, inductive experiential learning and heuristic Socratic learning (see e.g.Liu 2011Liu , 2016)), are all parts of the traditional Chinese education values.
However, values are aspirations, not necessarily realities, just like New Year resolutions are good aspirations, but may not turn desired actions.There are always gaps between the aspired education discourse and the practised education discourse (Liu, 2020), and that is unfortunately the typical state of affairs.'学而优 则仕 (Those most learned shall serve in governments).'1The most honourable career option for scholars is to work as government officials to apply their learnings and create values in society.However, as a populous country, China has always been '人才济济 (Crowded with talents)' and government positions have always been few in comparison.For this reason, it has always been competitive to excel in learning and stand out in exams.As a washback effect on teaching and learning, corners have often been cut in pedagogical processes and those desirable values in student-centred, experiential and heuristic teaching often stay as values only.The gentle breeze and nurturing rain often turn into storms and downpours to accelerate growth and expedite outcomes.
Didactic knowledge transmission from teachers to students represents the dominant pattern in elementary and high school classrooms in China (Huang 2004).Students are expected to engage in the reception, repetition, review and reproduction of the information transmitted from teachers (Hu 2002).Chinese parenting, often known as tiger parenting in the West (Chua 2011), is perceived to be strict, demanding, authoritarian and with too much of a focus on family obligation and hardship endurance.Such an approach to education may be conducive to producing low-level manufacturing workers that the Chinese economy has been relying on in the past, but is not well-suited to educate creative and innovative talents for a desired transition to an innovation-focused and knowledge-based economy in China (Liu 2016).A sensitive nerve of China is touched once a year at the announcement of Nobel Laureates for sciences, and the absence of Chinese scientists on the list is always interpreted in China as the failure of Chinese education to produce innovative-minded people.A sense of urgency is felt in China to improve the quality of education by changing the way of its deliverance.
'他山之石，可以攻玉 (Rocks from other mountains may be borrowed for extracting jade).'The Chinese answer to its educational problems has often been to reference and borrow best practices elsewhere.The period in modern Chinese history China Report 60, 1 (2024): 7-21 from the first Opium War in 1839 to the surrender of the Japanese at the end of the Second World War in 1945 has been called by the Chinese the Century of Shame.It was during these 100 years when China was invaded, maltreated and bullied by virtually every Western power, including Japan.A more damaging effect is that the Century of Shame made the Chinese lose their confidence in the traditional Chinese culture.'坚 船利炮 (The tall ships and sharp cannons)' of the invaders in the two Opium Wars (1839-1842; 1856-1860) broke the Chinese complacency and woke China up to face a new world order in which China was no longer the 'Central Kingdom' (中国 the literal meaning of China).China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) to a small island neighbour country created a more serious concern over the backwardness of traditional Chinese education and a sharper awareness of the importance of embracing Western education and Western industrialisation, just as Japan did.
The late Qing government began its earnest and active efforts to learn from the West, with foreign language schools established first, modern universities established second, and then young students selected and sent to study abroad in the United States and Europe.But it was not an all-out Westernisation.The guiding principle was a balanced one with '中学为体，西学为用 (Chinese learning for fundamental principles, Western learnings for practical application).'However, these self-revitalisation efforts failed to save the Qing government, and a Republican revolution overthrew the last Dynasty and started the Republic of China (1912China ( -1949)).At the very beginning of the Republican period, top Chinese scholars, disillusioned with the traditional Chinese culture, called for a break from the Confucian past and the creation of a new culture in China based on the Western standards of democracy and science, a movement called the New Culture Movement in China.In the second half of the 20th century, with the founding of the P.R.China in 1949, the Communist ideology, also a Western import, took root in China and rewrote the Chinese intellectual and educational discourse along the single line of the Marxist ideology.These historical transformations of the Chinese educational discourse have resulted in a gradual epistemological break with China's traditional educational discourses, and as a result, the modern Chinese intellectual discourse today is largely articulated in Westernised terms that have been normalised as the only legitimate discourse (Wu 2011).
Learning from others is always good, as 'For any three persons walking together, I am bound to be able to find teachers among them.'It is never a good idea trying to ' 闭门造车 (Build a cart behind closed doors)', not knowing what the state of the art of cart-building is today and not willing to reference good cart-building experiences elsewhere.We do not need to 'reinvent the wheels', which is an idiom in English.But there is a danger with borrowing.Here is another Chinese idiom called '东施效颦 (Dongshi emulating the walk)'.This is the story behind: Dongshi was a girl who was not so confident about her own look.She admired Xishi, another girl in the village whom she considered a beauty.Once Dongshi spotted Xishi walking with frowned eyebrows due to a pain in the chest.Dongshi did not know that but thought it was a beautiful way to walk.She tried to copy her and walked with frowned eyebrows too.

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That did not improve her look.Instead, her worsened look really scared the people in the village who ran to hide from her.The moral of this idiom is that blind borrowing, purely out of ill confidence about our own system, can be problematic.Furthermore, blinding borrowing without a good understanding of what we are trying to borrow can be problematic too.
It is without question that China has demonstrated 'cross-national attraction' to the Western approaches in education (Phillips and Ochs 2003;Tan 2015).At the turn of the 21st century, China engaged in a large-scale curriculum change initiative across subject matters, the eighth of its kind since 1949 (Tan and Chua 2015).As a centralised educational system, there is one national curriculum document for each subject matter for all over China.The change started with changes to the curriculum document, followed by the changes to textbooks.The aim of the reform is to shift from the traditional teaching approach with a focus on teacher-centred knowledge transmission to a learner-centred approach with a focus on students' knowledge construction (Liu 2011).The reform also hopes to change students' roles from passive receivers of information to active participants in creative learning, through such pedagogies as discovery-based learning, cooperative learning and problem-solving learning (Huang, 2004).It is easy to tell that these concepts are all Western concepts borrowed by China and written into the Chinese curriculum policies.
International policy referencing is a good practice, and the quick economic development in China since the 1980s was, to a large extent, due to China's active international engagement and policy references.But the problem may lie in the loss of confidence in the Chinese cultural discourse and the loss of the Chinese cultural identity.To really think of it, doesn't China already have these supposedly Western educational ideas?Doesn't China have ideas such as 'Learning without thinking will leave one still confused; thinking without learning will lead one into difficulty too' and 'Only provide guidance to students after they have done their own thinking'?Doesn't China have pedagogical values like 'Immerse teaching in fun activities' and 'Turn what they learned into good use'?Doesn't China expect teachers to be 'Good mentor, valuable friend' and 'Teach students in the most patient way' and 'Guide students in the most gentle manner'?Is China '舍近求远 (seeking far and neglecting what is close at hand)'?A more important question here is: Why do the same ideas have to be rewritten in borrowed Western terminologies and discourses so that they would sound more legitimate?Does this speak to a deep problem of the aphasia of China's own cultural discourse in the face of the incoming Western cultural discourse?
Discourse is the framework of thinking and a way to exert power (Foucault 1984).So the loss of the local cultural discourse poses a grave danger.There might be a need to revisit the principle of 'Chinese learning for fundamental principles, Western learning for practical application.'So what are the fundamental Chinese cultural principles today?Since 1949 with the founding of the P.R. China, Socialism has been the only politically correct discourse, a discourse used to rewrite Chinese history and Chinese society.However, despite the change in this official discourse, some elements of the

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Chinese culture have demonstrated some resilience and stability among the Chinese public in their daily activities and interactions (see Jaques 2012; Liu 2019).To reconcile the two, 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics' has been propagated in China as a new hybrid ideological discourse.However, anyone with some good grammatical knowledge would know that in the phrase, 'Socialism' is the centre, and 'Chinese characteristics' is the modifier.Socialism as a borrowed ideological discourse has been taken as the fundamental principle, with Chinese culture becoming an add-on, a complement and a sidekick at its best.The traditional Chinese culture may deserve a higher position, given its deep-rootedness in Chinese society reflected in the daily uses of Chinese idiomatic expressions.
Additionally, China needs to be aware of what Western borrowing is aimed to replace.In 2013, Shanghai was the first Chinese region to participate in PISA, and Shanghai students left their peers far behind in all aspects evaluated in this international benchmark exam.At the height of China's aspiration to realise a shift from the traditional teachercentred knowledge-transmission model of classroom teaching to a more constructive student-centred approach that has been practised in the West, the high PISA scores of Shanghai students were not considered an achievement of Chinese education, but rather as evidence that the Chinese education has focused too much on exams and knowledge accumulation, and not enough on the development of students' creativity and innovative competence.However, many educators and policy-makers in the West have been attempting to look into Chinese pedagogical practices for insight to improve their own benchmarking with the aim of 'Surpassing Shanghai' in PISA (Tucker 2011).As the United States tries to redesign its education system by looking at the world's best education systems, including China, the British schools are experimenting with the traditional Chinese method of math teaching in a government drive to stop British youngsters from falling behind their Asian counterparts (Harding 2016).They seem to be interested in ditching the 'progressive' and 'child-centred' styles that focus on applying math to real-life scenarios, and instead return to repetition, drills and 'chalk and talk' whole-class learning, the so-called mastery-based 'Shanghai math' method.
Is this somehow ironic?As this English idiom goes, 'One man's junk is another man's treasure.'It might be a good idea for China to take a pause in their ongoing outward search for ideas and take a careful look into their own rich educational traditions for some wisdom.Positive educational change might happen if they simply live by the educational values expressed in their own educational idioms.

CONCLUSION
Chengyu idioms are compressed and stable linguistic gems in the Chinese language that encapsulate the most durable elements of Chinese history and culture, given their longevity and durability.Their entry into the most frequently used vernacular