Founded in 1926, the Department of Chinese Language and Literature prides itself on an extravagant list of distinguished faculty members—Professor Chen Yinque, Zhu Ziqing, Liu Wendian, Yu Pingbo, Pu Jiangqing, Wang Li, Yang Shuda, Chen Mengjia, Zhang Qingchang, Shen Congwen, Wang Yao, and so on. Professor Zhu Ziqing headed the Department for 16 years, under whose leadership the Department took up an educational strategy that adheres to the principle of “Be conversant with the ancient and modern, and versed in the Chinese and foreign.” As for its research, the Department encourages the methodologies of the Beijing school and the Shanghai school equally laying emphasis on the precision and exactitude of textual criticism without losing sight of the broader issues. The Department was discontinued in the nationwide restructuring of institutions of higher education in 1952.

Restored in 1985, the Department succeeded to its liberal educational tradition, which has elevated the reputation of the university to the national level. The Department offers 3 majors in its undergraduate program: 1. Chinese Linguistics and Literature (open to international students), featuring an educational experience in both the humanities and the sciences with a focus on the former; 2. Chinese and Foreign Cultures, conducting a bilingual training,aiming to prepare students for a career in cultural exchanges between China and other countries; 3. Dual bachelor’s degree in editorial technology, a combination of the humanities and the sciences, which was once awarded the first prize for curriculum reform by the Municipal Government of Beijing. The third major was changed to an experimental Class in the humanities in 2005, whose enrollment has been entrusted to SHSS(School of Humanities and Social Sciences). Some of the students in the class choose to study in the Department. They select their majors only at the beginning of their fourth semester.

The Department has M.A. programs in Ancient Chinese Literature, Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Comparative Literature and World Literature, Literary Theories, Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Chinese Philology and Linguistics; a Ph.D. program in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature; and a research unit for Computational Linguistics which combines the strength of the humanities and the sciences, and has grown into its maturity in the past ten years.

Currently, there are 14 full professors, 8 associate professors, 2 lectures and 1 engineer in the Department. The department offers up to more than 70 courses every semester.And it is working on 6 projects funded by the National Funds of Social Sciences, 2 by the Ministry of Education Outstanding Young Teachers Program, 1 by the National Funds of National Keynote Lab and another by the Fund of Overseas Scientific Research. For the past 5 years, professors in the computational linguistics have published 16 SCI-indexed papers in English, and over 30 EI-indexed papers.