Mongolian Yuan System and Political Culture, Peking University Publishing House, April, 20 1 1. 1, The Coming and Going of Mobei, Yao Dali, Changchun Press1August, 997; The book was later renamed "The Rise and Fall of the Millennium —— The Rise and Fall of China Dynasties: The Storm of the Yuan Dynasty", which was published by Changchun Publishing House in March 2007.
2. Farewell to Historians. Sima Qian (co-authored with Pu Yu and Jin Bo), Shanghai Culture Publishing House, August 2008.
3. The Wisdom of Reading History, Fudan University Press, 20 10 0 1.
He also participated in the compilation of Yuan History edited by Han Rulin and General History of China edited by Chen Dezhi, and published nearly 30 academic papers successively. The most difficult thing to manage the history of Yuan Dynasty and frontier history is that there are many languages involved, and the main historical materials involve nearly ten languages such as Mongolia, Han, Tibet and Persia. Checking and comparing so many historical nouns and historical materials in different languages requires a set of very professional training and skills. Students who have attended the History of Cultural Exchange between the East and the West and the Study of the History and Geography of China's Frontier have all realized his skill of "naming and taking responsibility for facts": from a seemingly insignificant Chinese loan word, we can trace it back to its various forms in different Eurasian historical languages, and then deduce the communication history and cultural history behind it. His research is based on empirical research, trying to absorb the concepts, methods and theoretical frameworks of various fields of social science for comprehensive consideration. Among them, the most talked about is his research on national identity in historical period by using contemporary political science and anthropological theory. Teacher Yao often teaches students, "You should constantly broaden your horizons in your study and study related languages hard all your life, because learning a language is to open a window for you and let you know more about foreign cultures and theories."
In Mr. Yao's view, in a good paper, the insights expressed by the author perfectly and maturely must be cultivated by a much larger number of ideas or thoughts, but they may not be so mature and perfect before they can be formed; Just like the tip of the iceberg above the water, it is supported by ice seven or eight times larger than it under water. For the corner where the iceberg has been exposed, researchers need to push the meticulous research to the extreme with great patience, and under this corner, there are historical materials that have been familiar for a long time, as well as uninterrupted and personalized thinking, observation and sentiment. In other words, for liberal arts research, "specialization and depth" must be based on "extensiveness". Therefore, when instructing graduate students, Mr. Yao never blames the students for their hard work and wide coverage. On the contrary, he will "ramble" with students on topics outside the field of national history to sharpen their views. For example, although Mr. Yao majored in Yuan history, he has made commendable research on Historical Records. To this end, Shanghai SMG "Documentary Channel" also specially invited to produce a program to tell the audience about Sima Qian's people, events and thoughts in history.
In this era of pursuing high output, Mr. Yao belongs to those scholars who prefer to be lonely. Occasionally, he said to the students privately, "having a famous teacher is not a show-off capital, but often a great pressure." When writing an article, I feel that the teacher is still supervising myself! " Therefore, every article must be tempered by repeated opinions before it is published. He added: "If I can publish more than a dozen articles of 30,000 to 40,000 words, so that later researchers can't get around it, I will have a clear conscience in my studies. In fact, people's research energy is limited. Dividing extremely limited energy into so many so-called' works' may not be of good quality. " In fact, although Mr. Yao seems to suffer, his efforts have been recognized by schools and academic circles.
This academic requirement is naturally reflected in his students. Even if it's just a graduate student's book review, it's common to be revised, typed back, revised again, or even a dozen times. From the use of punctuation in the article to the overall conception and perspective, ambiguity is absolutely not allowed. Sometimes when encountering an article that is beautiful in form but ambiguous on key issues, Mr. Yao will seriously warn: "Social science research is not a literary creation. It is important to write well, but if there is no real breakthrough point of view, it will not be a good article after all. Really valuable ideas should be concise, accurate and in place when expressed, rather than relying on the stacking of flowers and plants and the overlapping of materials. "
Regarding teaching, Mr. Yao often said, "It's easy for a person to stand on the podium and pull a very simple thing to everyone's amazement." But if he wants to make a complicated thing understandable to everyone, he needs superb speech skills and adequate preparation. "Whether it is the usual lectures, conference reports or public speeches, it is essential for Mr. Yao to prepare a large number of speeches in advance. Sometimes, this speech is even marked in detail when to order PPT and when to say a few words.
Whenever students have something to say, Mr. Yao always emphasizes "speech etiquette": "Careful preparation can make things meaningful, learn to control the speed and time, and respect the audience everywhere; It is best to' make a stunt' and insert two or three jokes into a long speech to adjust the atmosphere. The lecture should be easy and graded, otherwise the audience will faint in 45 minutes. " In fact, Mr. Yao's lectures are generally recognized as good to listen to, and many jokes are also "enduring" among students. Some students even lamented: "There are teachers who can make professional English so attractive!"
Teacher Yao almost always prepares for two days before attending the history and geography class of China's frontier. Someone once asked inexplicably: "If you speak freely on the podium directly, you can also benefit the students below." Why does it take so long to prepare every time? Teacher Yao's answer is: "A teacher walks into the classroom with a lecture, just like a head coach walks into a football field. Every goal on the field is ostensibly caused by the superposition of many accidental factors. But a good coach always carries out the most detailed tactical analysis, strategic deployment and offensive and defensive drills before the game. Only in this way, those seemingly accidental factors will develop in their own direction on the court. The same is true when teaching courses. The teacher on the podium won't know exactly which sentence, knowledge point and idea he has, and whether it will stimulate the following students' interest in continuing to think. But because of this, teachers need to carefully prepare, organize and explain every word, every knowledge point and every idea. "
On the basis of "teaching to solve doubts", Mr. Yao also has the requirement of "spreading academic knowledge" for himself: teaching is not only teaching the content itself, but also showing "academic charm" to the students below. Many people think history is boring, so as a history teacher, we should try our best to show the beauty and interest of history itself. Open a door for the following audience to learn and let interested students explore for themselves. As far as academics are concerned, this is what the ancients said: "The inventor's initial intention comes first, and then the person's explanation comes later".
His students are all in science, engineering, international relations, economics and English, not only those who graduated from history department. Whether it is a master's degree or a doctor's degree, he will give applicants a fair chance. His explanation is: "Although the concept of' teaching without class' is not necessarily absolutely possible, it is always yearning."
After visiting Harvard for two years, Mr Yao has many unconventional ideas about teaching. First of all, to do a good job of discussion and communication between teachers and students, we must first establish enough communication foundation. Regardless of Fudan University or postgraduate courses, Mr. Yao will copy and distribute multiple reading materials and detailed bibliography for each class, so that students can keep abreast of the most basic research results and the latest research trends. In order to have a batch of foreign language books on the basis of frontier history in the department reference room, Mr. Yao copied a batch from the National Library at his own expense. Secondly, it is also an important measure for Mr. Yao to set up a reading club for graduate students majoring in frontier history. Let's read some basic historical materials or academic papers together, carefully scrutinize one problem after another, and cultivate graduate students' intensive reading ability and excellent study style. Sometimes a story has not been finished after several reading classes, but the books mentioned in the discussion are already full of tables. Finally, it is the emphasis on language ability. Every semester, Mr. Yao talks with his newly recruited students, designs the research direction, and determines the types and steps of language learning. One of the main topics discussed in the discussion class is how to translate accurately between different languages. Teacher Yao's requirement is that every translation should be accurate enough to translate every word back. At the same time, graduate students should be able to attack the views of foreign scholars and put an end to "behind closed doors", because the result is often repeated efforts or turning a blind eye.
Outside the professional field, the topic that Teacher Yao often talks about inside and outside the school is "How did the ancients read books". In his view, on the one hand, it is to make up for the current trend of cultural consumerism; On the other hand, some principles of reading are also universally applicable principles of being a man. Take his words: "Being a man is like reading, you can't be greedy, fast or lazy." Occasionally, I even solemnly warn my students: "Don't be too sophisticated, be naive. In fact, this is an essential ideological quality for a good scholar. With' Ning's true temperament', there is perseverance. " Teacher Yao always asks his students to be correct in their expectations, not to be extreme, not to go to extremes, and often quotes the old saying to teach students to "relax their minds" about books, things and people, "don't express their opinions first" and "be assured, generous and fair". These are the materials of historians. "When judging people, students are always required to be' neutral'. They should first see the contributions of others, and then criticize them. They will never be allowed to "point the way" at will. He also does not advocate students to think too complicated about interpersonal relationships: "others care about your point of view, not the author himself, the author's unit and the author's teacher after this point of view is ignored." "It should be less deliberate and more open-minded."
Teacher Yao has his own deeper concerns. He always tries to tell students in class: "In an era of pragmatism, people need learn to be lonely to stick to their own value rationality. Bottom line: Sometimes persistence is very important. " He argues that the task of rebuilding China's culture and value system requires the active and all-round participation of this cultural group, and the free thinking, free communication and creative transformation of every citizen. The pursuit of knowledge is not only to change personal destiny, but also to change the destiny of the surrounding communities and our general living conditions.