On Nov. 2, an English textbook dating back to China’s Qing Dynasty was displayed by a Chinese citizen from Chengdu, Sichuan province. The book showed how the Chinese people learned English more than a century ago.

　　11月2日，成都一位市民展示了清朝时候的英语教材。这份教材向我们展示了一个多世纪之前的中国人到底是如何学习英语的。

　The textbook is labeled as being from the "10th year of Emperor Xian Feng’s reign"(1851-1861). Experts at the West Document Repair Center in Sichuan pronounced the book authentic after examining its print, typeface and content. However, they are not sure which year it was published.

　　这份教材上标注着年份“咸丰(1851-1861)十年”。在检验这份教材的印刷、字条和内容之后，四川西方文献修复中心的专家证实这份教材是真实的。但是他们却不能够确定这份教材到底是哪一年出版的。

　　As the pictures show, each page of the book is divided into 12 grids, and each grid contains three sentences: a Chinese sentence on top, an English sentence in the middle and a pinyin transliteration at the bottom. Modern historians confirm that it was common during that period for Chinese people to learn English through pinyin. However, pinyin-guided English lessons mostly appear in non-standard textbooks, according to Professor Lei Hanqing, a linguist at Sichuan University.

　　如图片中所显示的那样，教材的每一页都被分成了12个网格，每一个格子里有三句话：最上面是中文原意，中间是英文，最下面是中文注音。据现代历史学家证实，在那个时期用中文注音的方式来学习英语是一个非常普遍的现象。但是据四川大学语言学家雷汉卿(音)教授表示说，中文注音英语课程大多出现在非标准课本里。