Corporate tycoons started seeking possible business tactics hidden behind the concepts of yin and yang during their first university lecture on traditional Chinese culture over the weekend.

Up to 40 entrepreneurs signed up to be enlightened at Peking University, shelling out 24,000 yuan (US$2,959) for a year's tuition.

Lu Yaping, a middle-aged computer company boss, is among the students who will spare two days every month for the class.

"It's a lifelong learning era and Chinese traditional cultures have been gradually enriching my life," said Lu, who declined to name her company as she said "learning is a private matter."

Embarking on her management career in 1991, Lu has followed the footsteps of many business managers in completing modern management courses and MBA training.

"All the management courses are reflected as techniques in my daily corporate management," she said. "But as my career developed, I felt I needed strategic thinking."

So two years ago, Lu started studying for her masters degree on philosophy in the university.

Lu and her 20 classmates have benefited from the masters programme, applying to further their education from the perspective of Chinese traditional culture, including Confucianism and Taoism.

"We launched the two-year programme on Chinese traditional philosophy," said Ji Jianzhong, programme head of the department. "The courses are designed to enrich their knowledge and improve their understanding of the world, nature and human beings."

Chinese media saw the programme as a result of the renewed interest in Chinese traditional culture, a topic that has been neglected as China has been deepening its reform and opening up to the outside world.

To change the situation, China has opened 26 schools on Chinese culture worldwide, and about 100 are planned in the near future.

As part of efforts to reinvigorate traditional Chinese culture, Renmin University of China has established the country's first school specializing in such studies this September.

"Like any culture, traditional Chinese culture with its history of more than 5,000 years has good and bad aspects," Lu said. "My aspirations to study it, last but not least, will influence my teenaged daughter."

(China Daily November 22, 2005)