What is it like to build a general education music curriculum from the ground up at Tsinghua University?

For Professor Luo Wei of the Center for Arts Education at Tsinghua University, the experience feels much like planting a tree. As she puts it, you sow seeds that suit the soil, enrich them with nurturing fertilizer, and walk alongside them as they grow.

One day, when the tree stands tall, its branches full and leaves lush, music becomes a beam of light that gently settles on its crown—becoming a luminous gateway to the world, ready to carry students anywhere their hearts desire.

In 2024, Luo Wei was honored with the 8th Beijing Young Teacher Achievement Award of Higher Education.

Sowing the Seeds: Spark of Thought in a Crowded Hall

"The first year was a real struggle. I had never stood before such a large lecture hall." When she first arrived at Tsinghua, Luo Wei felt at a loss with the teaching format of a comprehensive university. As a graduate in music, she was steeped in the one-on-one, master/apprentice model of learning.

Suddenly facing a large class of 120 students, her past experience no longer applied; she had to figure out everything from scratch.

"At first, I couldn't even manage the time properly. Sometimes the material I prepared for one lecture could fill three." To quickly adapt to the larger class format, Luo Wei learned through trial and error. To adjust her new teaching regimen, she would record her entire lectures and listen to them carefully afterward. She put herself in her “students' shoes” to get a feel for the classroom pace, then would meticulously enhance her content. In the classroom, she would intently observe the students' eyes and expressions for feedback during each segment. "In which part do they seem engaged? When does their gaze drift away from the stage?" She took mental notes … using their subtle cues to adjust her teaching rhythm and choose more compelling examples.

Feeling her way forward, Luo Wei spent a year gradually building the content and framework for her course. "It was a long and painful process, but also fascinating because it reshaped who I am." For Luo Wei, a major part of the joy of a large class lies in experiencing the wonderful chemistry that arises from the collision of ideas within the group. She feels like both a magician and a stage actor, sharing in the experience and co-creating each moment of the class with her students. When she sees them leaning in, captivated by what’s unfolding, Professor Luo feels a sense of happiness. "It's like a stage actor who has captured the entire audience's attention, drawing them into a fully immersive two-hour theatrical world. It brings an incredible sense of accomplishment."

Professor Luo teaching a student band on stage.

Fertilizing: Becoming a "Vessel"

After coming to Tsinghua, another significant transition for Professor Luo, beyond the change in teaching style, was the shift from specialized education to a general one. Facing students who would not pursue music professionally, Luo Wei realized it was more important to help them experience music as "a way to understand culture, to perceive beauty, and to see the world through a different lens," rather than to simply teach them technique.

In her class, Professor Luo guides students to break through disciplinary barriers, explore the connections between music and other fields, and leverage music to better understand the scientific attitudes of different eras, the humanistic perspectives of different regions, and the cultural concepts of different peoples.

This is precisely the origin of her course's name: "Musical Phenomena in a Multicultural Context." To provide her students with a richer, more multi-dimensional, and fulfilling course experience, Professor Luo spent the first few years auditing a wide range of general education courses of humanities at both Tsinghua University and Peking University. From philosophy and history to architecture and painting, she would seek out and expand her learning into any discipline that could be analogously connected to music.

To help non-major students with a weaker musical grounding grasp the core artistic qualities behind musical forms more smoothly, Professor Luo turned to visual art, graphic design, and video to make the intangible tangibl.

Concurrently, she delved deep into the perspectives on culture and the zeitgeist behind science, philosophy, and the humanities, interpreting music as a unique cultural phenomenon within the grand framework of human civilization. Her aim is to cultivate a "cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, and historically integrated" way of thinking to her students.

Every seemingly effortless or spontaneous moment in class is built upon an accumulation of study and reflection outside of it. "Only when I have done my own homework on a topic and have a sufficient reserve of knowledge do I feel confident enough to explore its connections in the classroom."

Wei Yuankong, from Cohort 1993, Department of Mechanical Engineering, wrote this evaluation after completing the course: "This was the first time in all my years that I experienced music through the lens of culture. From medieval chants to Celtic folk songs, from flamenco of Iberia to the cantillation of the Arabian Peninsula, from the ornamentation of the Baroque to the freedom of African drumbeats—every kind of music originates from its own culture and history. No art form is without its roots."

This broad absorption of diverse knowledge not only cultivates the course, but also ripens Professor Luo herself. She becomes a vessel, grafting a multitude of arts, cultures, and energies into her body. She carefully filters each drop to distill its essence, then lets it flow through the rhythmic pattern of music, irrigating the classroom and nourishing her students.

Growth: A Different Way of Seeing the World

Just as a river shapes the land it flows through, Luo Wei constantly finds new inspiration and insights through the reciprocal process of teaching and learning, and in her exchanges with students.

During one of her classes, Luo Wei posed a question to her students: "What does a musical canon look like to you?" It was meant to be a somewhat functional question, intended to check if she had clearly explained the relatively complex musical concept.

However, an unexpected answer from the classroom left Luo Wei deep in thought. To this student, a "canon" was like the students of Tsinghua University: when freshmen arrive, new and uncertain, they are trying to adapt to this environment; sophomores push forward under the heavy pressure of coursework and student activities; juniors gradually clarify their future direction; and seniors hustle and bustle between graduation, further studies, or internships.

Every year, new students arrive as graduates depart, a natural cycle that repeats like the core of polyphony. We all see ourselves as independent individuals, yet we inadvertently mimic each other's lives.

Professor Luo still remembers the tremor she felt in her heart upon hearing this answer. "I used to think that understanding the fundamentals of music was the necessary path to appreciating it. But at that moment, it suddenly occurred to me that music is a life instinct, an innate ability woven into the human genome. This student might not have mastered the technical aspects of a 'canon,' but by saying, 'I saw myself and my life in it,' they captured the most powerful gift that music offers to humanity."

There are many such moments of interaction and exchange. To create more opportunities for hands-on practice and communication, Luo Wei designed a special course presentation section, moving the classroom to the Multifunctional Hall of the Mong Man Wai Building. The original purpose of these presentations was to encourage students to break academic silos and explore music in unconventional ways. The content of the presentations each semester brings Luo Wei many moving moments. For example, students used live-performance-based real-time video and delay effects to explore the relationship between music, time, and space. Others combined piano, percussion, and mime to reflect on the harm of cyberbullying on individuals. One group applied AI technology to compose a piece of music from a collective painting scribbled on the spot by the entire class.

As the lecturer for the "Musical Phenomena in a Multicultural Context" course, Professor Luo Wei and her students experiment with AI-generated music based on a collective painting created live in class.

Beyond the classroom, Luo Wei also serves as the faculty advisor for the musical theater society, the THU Musical, building a more multi-dimensional space for expression for Tsinghua students who are keen on music. Today, the THU Musical has truly matured, managing itself and building its own network of collaborators beyond campus. In the theater, cohort after cohort of young people have left behind their songs and laughter, as well as their sweat and tears.

As the faculty advisor for the THU Musical, Professor Luo takes a curtain call with the cast and crew of The Phantom of the Opera.

2025 marks Luo Wei's 17th year at Tsinghua. "The river of time flows into the sea"—the students she once taught have long since graduated, following the rivers of their own lives toward different oceans and she herself has grown from a novice struggling with large lectures into the master teacher her students describe as "a guide on a marvelous journey through time and space" and "Someone you can always trust."

She plants music like a tree, and lets its spirit light the path to a life of wisdom.

Editor：Li Han