The Chinese classical poetry doyenne Florence Chia-ying Yeh died at the age of 100 last year at Nankai University where she held a teaching post. Yeh dedicated seven decades to the research, teaching and promotion of classical Chinese poetry in China and beyond. She was the teacher of many renowned Chinese literary masters.

Born to a literary family in Beijing in 1924, Yeh held teaching posts in American and Canadian universities. Starting in 1979, she returned to the Chinese mainland every year to give lectures on Chinese literature and poetry, and lived in Nankai University during her final decades.

Yuanxin Zhang, a Chinese-American student from the United States, first learned about Yeh in 2008 through a TV program when she was just 10 years old. Deeply inspired, she decided to study under Yeh’s guidance and later enrolled at Nankai University to pursue classical Chinese poetry.

Today, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies at Harvard University. "I want to follow Professor Yeh's example and share the beauty of Chinese poetry with the world," said Zhang.

Sharing China's stories through classical poetry has long been a cornerstone of the School of Literature at Nankai University. Since 2014, the university has hosted multiple international symposia on Chinese poetic education, gathering scholars from around the world to explore the theory, history, and practice of Chinese poetry teaching.

At the 2023 symposium, more than 200 experts and scholars from the United States, Canada, Japan, and China came together to exchange ideas on Chinese poetic education. This year's ongoing Jialing Cup–Chinese Poetry Teaching program invites participation from international students and poetry lovers worldwide.

Last July, Nankai University launched its international summer course. The program invited globally recognized directors as mentors, guiding 40 students from diverse disciplines to produce short documentaries inspired by classical Chinese poetry. Each film drew upon the spirit of traditional verse to tell cultural stories of international faculty and students living in Tianjin.