Author: William Tang
Translator: Joyce Zhao
Those who went to high school or college in mainland China and loved studying English will remember Deng Yanchang’s frequent articles on oral English in the magazine English Language Learning. Professor Deng Yanchang, born in Phoenix, Arizona, was a very distinctive figure of the Deng family.
Figure 1, 2009. Professor Deng Yancheng attends the 30th anniversary of the founding of the American Studies Center at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
Deng Yanchang was born in Phoenix in November, 1923. His parents came from Kaiping, Guangdong, China, and he was a second generation Chinese immigrant.
When Deng Yancheng thought back to his childhood in Phoenix, he reflected that the Chinese had a tradition of putting education first, so he and his siblings all either studied diligently or helped their parents in their convenience store business. The children of Chinese families tended to only study or work, refraining from sports, movies, entertainment, and social events, so their grades in school were all exemplary.
At that time, racism in America was rampant, although the animosity towards Chinese Americans was not as severe as to African Americans. Some of the hotels, restaurants, ballrooms, public pools, etc. did not welcome Chinese Americans, and knowing this, many Chinese Americans refrained from going to such places as well.
At the start of the year 1943 during WWII, Deng Yanchang knew that the U.S. army needed reinforcements, so he signed up for the army reserve. A few months later, he entered the U.S. Army, serving for more than three years. Not only did he serve within U.S. territories, he had also served in Myanmar, India, and China. In his last six months with the army, he was in China. After the war, he came back to the United States and then was released from military service. He decided to finish his college education as soon as possible.
Thus, he enrolled in the University of Southern California studying international relations, where the tuition and living costs were covered by the U.S. government. In June of 1948, he graduated with flying colors, hoping to become a U.S. diplomat. His professor, department head, who was also his mentor, told him: “Frank, I’m very sorry to tell you that as a Chinese, you are unable to become a diplomat.”
Upon receiving such discriminatory treatment, Deng Yanchang resolved to return to his parents’ homeland China to continue his education and career development.
From September of 1948 to June of 1951, he studied at Yenching University. Then from June of 1951 to April of 1952, he studied at the People’s Revolutionary University of Northern China. In the 1950’s, English was not popular, so he was assigned to positions at the library of Beijing Architectural College and the 26th Middle School of Beijing upon graduation.
In 1956, Deng Yanchang was sent to the Spanish department of Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages (known today as Beijing Foreign Studies University) to work. From June of 1957, he switched to the English department, and he served as the associate head of department.
He said we were very lucky. The associate dean, Professor Wang Zuoliang, and the head of the English department, Professor Xu Guozhang, both had big hearts, open minds, and international horizons. Due to the support of these two professors, after the visit of President Nixon in 1972 and the arrival of the Opening of China, Mr. Deng contributed to the start of an American studies major in the English department during the late 1970’s. In 1979, the same year that the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America established diplomatic relations, the American Studies Center was officially established.
Even at the beginning of Chinese-American relations, Mr. Deng realized that to the people of China who experienced the closed state of Chinese-American relations for decades, understanding and accurately perceiving America was incredibly important. He penned China’s first American social and cultural English reader, and he made the American Studies Center the first American studies institution to wholly use English teaching materials in China. The teachers of the American Studies Center initiated the first American studies curriculum to be taught in English while emphasizing human compassion, broad international visions, and realistic, objective perception, nurturing students’ critical thinking and problem solving.
Famous works of Deng Yanchang include Oral English Textbook (co-authored), Conversational English Fifty Topics, Freshman English, and American Society and Culture. In the magazines Foreign Language Teaching and Research and English Language Learning, he published more than seventy papers and articles.
Figure 2. Textbooks written by Professor Deng Yanchang.
In 1989, Mr. Deng reached the age to retire. That year, he went back to America where he was born, raised, served in the army, and studied in college, all totalling twenty-six years, where afterwards he taught American studies at University of Hawaii.
Figure 3, 2007. Professor Deng Yanchang with his colleagues, attending an international discussion conference hosted by the American Studies Center.
Not only was this legendary figure from Phoenix a respected senior of English teaching circles in China, he was also the first to create an American Studies Center in a Chinese university. His contributions to China’s understanding of America were remarkable and could not be overlooked.
Professor Deng passed away on December 12, 2020 at his home in Arizona at age 97.
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