My grandmother could read and write it fluently, but that's because in her day a good amount of correspondence was still written in Classical Chinese.

> Of course reading classic Chinese requires extensive training, that's what their middle and high school educations are for

I highly doubt your claim that your average Chinese HS graduate can read or write ancient or Classical Chinese, given that there's not much incentive to acquire that skill. I doubt even 5% of Chinese college graduates can do it.

We still teach Latin in the US, but hardly anyone graduates high school with the actual ability to read and write in Latin. I spent 6 years between middle and high school learning French, but I certainly wasn't proficient enough to even read a newspaper, even though I studied hard and got good grades in it.

I just asked my wife, who was in China until high school, and she says she doesn't know a single person who can read Classical Chinese, despite having many college-educated friends in China.

Writing classic Chinese is a completely different matter. It is considered an impressive feat, which some high school students exploit to achieve publicity for themselves and to get full score in the exam. Examples are just a google search away: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%96%87%E8%A8%80%E6%96%87%...

If your wife had undergone the same pressure to pass the all important college entrance exam, like I had many years ago, she would have learned to read classic Chinese, like I have.

My wife had already read 资治通鉴 when she was in high school. She is a special case though because she scored the first in her province's college entrance exam. I was far worse than her as I was not even among the first five in my high school, but now I read classic Chinese for pleasure, just like many other educated Chinese men would do when they get older.

> I was not even among the first five in my high school

By your own admission, both you and your wife are exceptional. If your HS class had 150 people in it, you're still in the top 5%. You are by definition part of an academic elite. You both have the motivation, time, and skill to appreciate classical Chinese literature, but you're improperly generalizing to the general population.

What about the other ~100k+ people who took the provincial exam that year, who scored much worse on that section? Or do you just tautologically consider them all uneducated people, because they failed to acquire a working knowledge of classical literature?

There are plenty of topics on the college entrance exam that people temporarily acquire some level of proficiency in to pass, but how many people actually retain it once they're working? For example, calculus is (generally) required for college applicants, but I'm willing to bet that 80%+ of college graduates are not able to do basic integrals and derivatives on the spot without access to reference materials.

Hence the general skepticism about your claim that educated Chinese people can read classical Chinese to any reasonable level of proficiency, if we define 'educated' as 'has a degree'.

The ability to read classic Chinese is not comparable with doing Calculus. The former is a language, the latter is math.

In particular, the basic vocabulary of classic Chinese is more or less the same as vernacular Chinese. The differences are the syntax and usage, which once acquired, would not be forgotten.

I think most people in this thread assumed 'educated' just means high school and college-educated, which is why everyone is disagreeing with you so vehemently. Since most people have at least a high school education, that's clearly not sufficient to be 'educated'.

It seems your definition of 'educated Chinese' is basically tautological and prescriptive -- a Chinese person can't be considered truly educated until they have gained the ability to read the classics. I would hazard that only a tiny fraction of secondary school graduates each year would be truly 'educated', under your definition.

While that's a view that is consistent with thousands of years of Confucian tradition, it might be helpful to state your assumptions and definitions up front next time.

For example, someone has just gone through the motion of schools and learned nothing, he may even be functionally illiterate (as 19% high school graduates in the US do, http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/32-million-us-adults...) by your assumed Western definition, that person is "educated". However, any Chinese would disagree with that.

So it's just a matter of opinion. Mine just has more commonsense: "If you really learned what schools taught you, you can call yourself educated, otherwise, you are not."