The nature of culture and its place in foreign-language teaching (FLT) have been explored at considerable length in Western scholarly literature. These topics have also received the attention of FLT scholars in China, which, with its vast educational system and increasing involvement on the international stage, has the potential to provide an instructive contribution to the debate. The Chinese literature is, however, largely unknown outside the Mandarin-speaking world. We therefore conducted an extensive survey of the relevant literature in China, from its inception in 1980 through 2014. Our aim is to provide a relatively comprehensive overview of the main themes and research perspectives, and the development and current state of culture teaching and intercultural communication studies in that country. This paper presents the main findings of that survey, against the background of the history of Chinese EFL syllabi. The survey indicates that culture is principally perceived from an anthropological or sociological perspective as the way of life. Culture learning is predominantly viewed as static knowledge of products, practices and perspectives rather than a dynamic process of meaning making. There has been a gradual transition in pedagogical theory and practice from the transmission of knowledge about culture and cultures to the development of intercultural communicative competence. Some innovative and empirically based ideas have been proposed, but our findings suggest that the question of culture teaching in FLT has not yet been explored in a thorough-going and systematic manner.
