January 16, 2013
The most famous maverick teacher in China.
Photo from YouTube user Stephen Thompson.
If you were to attend one of Yuan Tengfei’s history lectures at Beijing’s Haidian Teachers Training College, you might think that you’re in the United States, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, where freedom of speech and research are guaranteed. For example, Yuan might say: “During the first 20 years or so of the People’s Republic of China the Red Terror cost more than 20 million innocent lives” or “The Mao Mausoleum in Beijing should change its name to the Holocaust Museum, for there lies a man whose hands are stained with blood.”
During his lectures Yuan speaks quickly, in a strong Beijing accent. He is humorous with a love of onomatopoeia. Before starting his lessons he always writes this Chinese proverb on the blackboard: “The speaker is not guilty, the listener learns the warning.” He teaches history like baking cookies, forming the material into sweet dough to feed his students with.
The “most famous maverick teacher in China” as the New York Times correspondent D.K. Tatlow has called Yuan, was born in 1972, though he wasn’t always so famous. After graduating from Beijing Normal University he started his teaching career in the 90s while moonlighting at a cram school to help students pass the university’s entrance examination.
It wasn’t until 2008, when his students at the school posted videos of his lectures online, that Yuan Tengfei became a famous figure. Videos of the eloquent and vivacious teacher attracted public attention and fans, as well as numerous opponents who posted comments about his critical or “traitorous” views of Chinese history. Within a short time the hits on his videos reached millions.
Astonishingly, as a consequence, the official CCTV invited Yuan to be a speaker on the popular history program Lecture Room. They even allowed him to give extended lectures on the Song dynasty and the contemporary history of the PRC—an extremely sensitive topic.
But Yuan mixes official textbook content with his own interpretation and speaks the truth in a frank and joyful way. For example, in his July 2011 lecture on Mao Zedong, he compared Mao to Hitler and Stalin and described the Cultural Revolution as the darkest era in human history. “Mao Zedong’s greatest contribution was his death in 1976,” Yuan said. “Should he have died in 1949 or even 1959, history would look totally different.”