Guide to College English Teaching (2020 edition) issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education clearly defines the nature of college English courses, which is both instrumental and humanistic, and puts forward high requirements for the intercultural competence of Chinese college students. As early as in the late Qing Dynasty, although China did not have a perfect discipline system and offered no courses such as "intercultural competence", some schools have carried out teaching activities of intercultural competence. This paper aims to investigate the redeeming points of intercultural English teaching in Christian colleges and official colleges in the late Qing Dynasty in terms of intercultural communication through direct contact, and then put forward some targeted suggestions on how to implement intercultural English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities under the background of internationalization of higher education.

Keywords: intercultural competence; ICC; intercultural communication; intercultural English; the late Qing Dynasty