In Chinese, people usually don't call Classical Chinese as 'Classical', instead people addressed it as 文言(Wen Yan), which roughly means the 'Written Speech' ind

In Chinese, people usually don't call Classical Chinese as 'Classical', instead people addressed it as 文言(Wen Yan), which roughly means the 'Written Speech' indicating it is special form of written Chinese, not spoken Chinese, which is often called 白话(Bai Hua, the Plain Speech), or Vernacular Chinese. Since WenYan is created specifically for written and rarely used for speaking, there is a unique phenomenon in Chinese called "文白分离(Wen Bai Fen Li)", means the 'the Separation of Written and Spoken Chinese'. For nowadays Chinese people, it still requires intensive learning in order to read WenYan text from the ancient time as if it is a foreign language.