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During the latter part of 1984, a group of nine men and women attending a four-month Manchu language course rallied under the leadership of one of their classmates, fifty-five year old Jin Baosen, to work toward the common goal of establishing a Manchu school in Beijing. Jin Baosen, whose original Manchu surname was Aisin Gioro, was a descendant of the Qing ruling house and a history teacher at Beijing's Middle School #24. In the decade since the Manchu Academy was founded in early 1985, he has served as the school's director and chief administrator. The Manchu Academy also has a group of ten advisors which includes such prominent individuals as Dai Yi, China's foremost Qing historian and the former head of the Institute of Qing Historical Studies located at National People's University, and Hu Jieqing, wife of the renowned writer Lao She.

The founders of the academy shared a common concern that the language, culture and history of the Manchu people was falling into oblivion, and they established the school to help rescue and preserve this heritage. At that time, there were only twenty some experts working on the more than one and a half million Qing documents written in Manchu and housed at China's Number One Historical Archives in Beijing. These scholars, trained in the first two decades of the People's Republic of China, were already middle-aged and it was estimated that at the rate they were working it would take at least several hundred years to finish editing these materials and translating them into Chinese. Yet the documents, which were all hand-written on paper, had already begun to decay, so it was crucial that the pace of work be greatly accelerated if these texts were not going to be lost to posterity.

The founders of the Manchu Academy were also motivated by a concern that the vast majority of Manchus knew little about their own heritage, a phenomenon that was for the most part due to the widespread sinicization of the Manchus in the past few centuries. It was further exacerbated by the fact that after 1911 the government of the Republic of China harshly condemned the non-Han rulers of the Qing dynasty, which led many Manchus to downplay and sometimes even cover up their ethnic origins. Only a small percentage of the approximately 4.3 million ethnic Manchus said to be living in China in 1985 still spoke Manchu.

The founders envisioned that the Manchu Academy would be a place where people from all walks of life could come two evenings a week to study Manchu language and culture and learn about Qing dynasty history. Even though the school was established with only ¥200 and initially lacked a permanent home, its founders insisted that it be an institution where the teachers volunteered their services and the students did not pay tuition. As such, it was and still is the only free part-time school in all of China.

Even though the academy has since then obtained significantly more funding and has a permanent home in Beijing's Middle School #24, its funding is still minimal and finances continue to be a challenge.

The curriculum consists primarily of classes in Manchu language, but there are also lectures on Manchu history and literature, Qing history and reading ancient documents. Although the course of studies was originally designed to be for two years, it was later shortened to one year because it was difficult for students to commit themselves to a part-time school for such a long period of time. Several years, the academy has even offered an advanced class for a select group of students who have completed the initial course of study.

The founders of the school were concerned that they have a first-rate faculty, so they invited researchers from the Institute of Minority Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Beijing Research Institute of Culture and History, and the Manchu Division of the Number One Historical Archives to teach the language courses. They also arranged for experts on Qing history from the Institute of Qing Historical Studies and researchers from the Institute of Minority Studies to come lecture on Manchu history and culture.

From the very beginning, the Manchu Academy has had great success in attracting students. Much to the founders' surprise, there was a tremendous response to the announcement of the school's founding and they were forced to create an exam to help them choose ninety students from among the more than one hundred and fifty people who sought to enroll. In the ten years since the academy's establishment in 1985, a group of approximately 40 to 120 students has enrolled each year, the number of students accepted being dependent on the numbers of teachers and classrooms available. Each year, about half of the students have completed the entire course of studies. To date, a total of 376 students have graduated from the Manchu Academy.

In many respects, the students represent a true cross-section of modern-day Beijing. They come from a variety of ethnic groups, including the Manchu, Mongolian, Hui and Han Chinese nationalities (although the majority are Manchus). They range in age from sixteen to seventy-two and in level of education from graduates of junior high school to holders of doctoral degrees. Some are university professors or researchers, while others are college students or workers, and still others are retired professionals, housewives or youths awaiting employment.

Regardless of their different backgrounds, the students are bound together by a common commitment to learn Manchu, whether it be for current or future work needs or, in some cases, out of a desire to understand and embrace their ethnic heritage.

A number of the academy's graduates have gone on to make some real contributions to the field of Manchu Studies. For example, from just the first class of forty some graduates, one student became the first typesetter for Manchu books at the Nationalities Publishing House, another translated a Manchu collection of stories into Chinese and has published one of them in Manyu yanjiu, another researched shamanism in Heilongjiang and published two articles on it in Minzu wenxue yanjiu and four others assisted researchers at the Institute of Chinese Medicine who were studying early Qing dynasty medicine.

In addition to teaching students Manchu and introducing them to Manchu literature, history and culture, the academy has been involved in a series of other activities aimed at spreading knowledge of Manchu to a wider audience. The school sponsors an annual two and a half hour series of lectures featuring prominent scholars speaking on topics such as the origins of the Manchu people, Manchu customs, Manchu contributions over the ages, the Manchus of Beijing, and the Qianlong Emperor. Originally limited to the academy's students, the lecture series is now open to the general public and commands an audience of more than seven hundred each year.

Since 1985, the academy has also made some significant contributions in the publishing field. The school recently issued its own textbook, entitled Manwen jiangyi. Over the past decade, the academy also reprinted works such as the Qingwen qimeng, Man-Han liubu chengyu, Gongwen yongyu, Zhezou yongyu, Chuxue bidu and the Qingwen zonghui. In addition, members of the school are currently compiling a Chinese-Manchu dictionary which they hope to publish.

The academy has also been active outside of Beijing. It has dispatched teachers numerous times to various locales in the north and northeast of China to teach Manchu and to assist others in setting up Manchu classes. In response to requests from all over the country, the school has also provided inscriptions in Manchu and translations of Manchu writings. It even helped a village in Shandong establish a Manchu museum.

The Manchu Academy of Beijing has clearly made a tremendous contribution to the advancement of Manchu Studies in China. Whereas for a long time the hub of Manchu Studies was not in China, this is no longer the case, in part thanks to the efforts of Jin Baosen and the teachers and students of the Manchu Academy over the past decade.

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The author wishes to express her heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to Jin Baosen and Wang Zhenhua, without whose help this article would not have been possible.

For further details about the Manchu Academy, see Manyu yanjiu (1990.4): s.