In 1965, Beijing Normal University established the International Student Office and the International Student Chinese Teaching and Research Office. Since then, it has started admitting foreign students and has been engaged in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. After the Great Cultural Revolution, the International Student Office was re-established in the winter of 1978. At that time, our college reopened its door to the world of Chinese teaching. As a result of the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy and China’s increasing international exchanges, the number of foreign students coming to China to learn Chinese grows constantly. In order to adapt to this new situation, BNU expanded the Chinese Teaching and Research Office in 1980, driving the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language to new heights.

With the development of Chinese teaching and the expansion of the school size, in September of 1985, the International Student Chinese Teaching and Research Office became independent  from the Foreign Student Office. It was officially named “the Chinese as a Foreign Language Teaching Center” and became a unit on the same level as other schools and departments of BNU. The center set up the Chinese Language Teaching and Research Office, which for the first time studied “the Teaching of Chinese as a Foreign Language” as an independent discipline. For the development of this discipline and more effective teaching, the Chinese as a Foreign Language Teaching Center established three teaching and research offices of reading and writing, listening and speaking, as well as language and culture to carry out comprehensive Chinese teaching and research.

The discipline of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language at BNU developed rapidly in 1997. In that year, we established a secondary college “the School of Chinese as a Second Language” based on “the Chinese as a Foreign Language Teaching Center”. It began to admit postgraduates majoring in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and foreign undergraduates majoring in Chinese Language, thus officially launching the academic education of the discipline of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. After years of development, “the School of Chinese as a Second Language” has established a doctoral program and has eventually become a multi-level teaching and research institute specialized in training domestic and international doctors and masters, foreign undergraduates as well as non-degree students of both long term and short term.

In order to meet the international demand for Chinese teaching and to keep pace with the strong development of cultural pedagogy, in October of 2000, “the School of Chinese as a Second Language” was renamed “Chinese Language and Culture College”, which clearly integrated language and culture into the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. The College employed Mr. Xu Jialu, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, as the School’s Dean.

In 2003, Chinese Language and Culture College of BNU was listed on the first “National Bases of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language” ranking third in China. Under the leadership of Dean Xu Jialu, all the students and faculty of the college are taking on the collective mission of spreading Chinese internationally and working together to create a new platform integrating cultural transmission and language teaching.