Studies in traditional culture are in demand among the more than 2,000 high-level central government officials who have been asked to return to the classroom this year.

The senior bureaucrats have been asked to put their job titles aside and head back to class by the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The organization is calling on bureau-level officials from 15 ministries and commissions within the central government to study for at least 40 courses this year.

Seven elite universities, including Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC, Peking University and Tsinghua University, are offering the special lectures and seminars that are being snapped up by the officials, who are typically in their 40s and 50s.

Courses include such subjects as party history and leadership building. The favorites are those that talk about traditional culture.

Yu Dan, who runs a course named Traditional Culture and the Principles of Governing at Beijing Normal University, received applications from 155 officials during the course sign-up session while many other courses pulled in between 20 and 30 names.

Yu came to national attention when she taught the Confucian Analects on China Central Television in 2006 and has been called "Academic Superwoman".

The three popular lectures are all being conducted at Peking University. They are: Wisdom in the Book of Changes, Taoism and the Wisdom of Zhuang Zi and Zen Buddhism and Human Life.

"At the very beginning, the Book of Changes was used for augury, but gradually, it has been adopted to help people make top decisions," said Yu Dunkang, 80, who will teach the course. Yu was speaking during an interview with Southern Weekly.

He now has 290 senior government officials clamoring to take his course.

Yan Tiejun, an official in the Working Committee of Central Government Departments, said he was not surprised that so many senior government officials wanted to learn about traditional culture, saying it was something different to what the officials may have studied in the past.

"Ministries used to organize professional training and few culture courses were provided," Yan said.

Twenty years after graduating from university, Zhang Ning, deputy director of the China Youth Center for International Exchange, wore sports shoes and went for a stroll around the classrooms, canteens and open spaces at Renmin University of China.

Zhang said she too was in no doubt which courses she would find useful.

"We are not children any more and we have the ability to tell which are the good courses. I dislike teachers who don't make their own judgments."

METRO