Exhibit: Dunhuang and Beyond
2024-11-15 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-16 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-17 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-22 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-23 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-24 14:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Sackler Building, Lower Level, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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A major milestone and world-renowned heritage site within Silk Road networks, Dunhuang preserves more than 400 embellished Buddhist cave shrines in present-day northwest China.

Dunhuang’s cave shrines date from the fifth to fourteenth centuries. Each encloses visitors within murals and carved figures that depict Buddhist legends and paradises. Chronicling innumerable exemplary works of Buddhist artmaking over centuries, Dunhuang forms the largest encyclopedia art collection in situ. More significant than these artistic achievements, the caves offer a glimpse into a universe that rests beyond our known physical reality. Much like the shadowy illusions of Plato’s allegorical cave, the pictorial programs across Dunhuang’s caves reveal higher truths about life, death, and spiritual transcendence.

This fall, CAMLab contextualizes Dunhuang within Buddhism’s broader currents of space- and art-making that surged across China during the medieval period.• Immersing visitors in confluences of light and sound, the Cave Dance and Shadow Cave projects are case studies of two Dunhuang caves that reimagine the rich theatricality conjured by depictions of the dramas of the Buddha’s life and dances of transcendent beings.

• Rebuilding the world’s tallest pagoda in VR, the Embodied Architecture project invokes an 11the century transmission of these dynamics within the towering Shayka pagoda of the Fogang Monastery in present-day Yingxian, China. There, Buddhist pictorial motifs demarcate a journey of ascension toward enlightenment.

• The Digital Temple project uses an interactive interface to unpack the multiplicity of compositions and multivalent topographies rendered across the murals of Kaihua monastery.

By examining Buddhism’s three primary contexts in medieval China—the cave, the pagoda, and the temple—these CAMLab projects reveal the dramatic perceptual experiences and invisible force fields embedded by visual programs within Buddhist sites.Reserve Your Ticket

Venue

Fan Dai — Certainties out of the Uncertain: Subnational Climate Diplomacy Between the U.S. and China
2024-11-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Fan Dai, Director, California-China Climate Institute, University of California, Berkeley; Senior Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Dr. Fan Dai is the director of California-China Climate Institute, and adjunct faculty at Energy and Resource Group, University of California, Berkeley. She is also a Senior Fellow in the Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research expertise includes market mechanisms for climate change mitigation, climate diplomacy and governance.

Dr. Dai was appointed by former California Governor Jerry Brown as Special Advisor to chair the state’s China Interagency Working Group and served as the liaison on critical economic and environmental initiatives with China. Previously, she served as a senior advisor at the California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, where she provided counsel on the state’s international policy and global climate partnerships. At the California-China Climate Institute, she led several critical research projects on subnational climate policy and long-term planning for carbon neutrality. Dr. Dai received her BS in law from Beijing Forestry University, her master of law from Berkeley Law, University of California, and her doctoral degree on environmental policy and economics from State University of New York at Syracuse.

Sponsored by Harvard-China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

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The Role of Long-Duration Storage in Decarbonizing China's Power Sector
2025-01-30 15:30 - 16:30 | Pierce Hall Room 301, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Haiyang Jiang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard-China Project

The increasing integration of renewable energy sources introduces significant long-term uncertainty to power systems, creating challenges for maintaining energy balance over extended periods. Traditionally, coal-fired generation has provided the flexibility needed to address these imbalances. However, as coal-fired generation is phased out, long-duration storage emerges as a promising solution to mitigate the risks of long-term imbalances in renewable-dominated power systems. This talk will explore the critical role of long-duration storage in advancing the decarbonization of China’s power sector.

Dr. Haiyang Jiang is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Harvard-China Project at Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2023 and was a visiting student at the Harvard-China Project in 2022. His research focuses on power system modeling and planning, long-duration energy storage, and assessing long-term inadequacy risks in the power sector.

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Beijing’s Multiple Facets from the Qing to the Present (1644-2025)
2025-02-13 10:00 - 17:00 | Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, 121 Bay State Rd, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
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Speakers:XU Yamin, Department of History, Lemoyne College Eugenio Menegon, Department of History, Boston UniversityDaigengna Duoer, Department of Religion, Boston UniversityCathy Yeh, World Languages and Literatures, Boston UniversityMA Zhao, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Washington University in St. LouisMin Ye, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston UniversityJorge Heine, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

Presentations followed by Q&A and conversations on the history of Beijing, past, present, and future, at the intersection of urban history, politics, religion, literature, and the arts. The meeting is open to faculty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates.Register at: https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bmFCX0ScZP4RU8K?Q_CHL=qr

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China Initiative: Impacts and Implications – Law, Science, and U.S.-China Relations
2025-02-13 12:30 - 13:30 | WCC 2012, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speakers: Patrick Toomey, National Security Project Deputy Director, ACLUGang Chen, Professor, MIT Mechanical EngineeringYasheng Huang, Professor, MIT Sloan SchoolEdgar Chen, Special Advisor, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association

The China Initiative, launched under the Trump administration, led to the wrongful prosecution of Chinese American scientists, including MIT Professor Gang Chen. With discussions of its possible revival, this talk will explore its legal and social impact, its effects on the scientific community, and what its return could mean for U.S.-China relations.

Sponsored by China Law Association. For more info, contact Ying Zhou at yzhou@jd25.law.harvard.edu

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Film Screening: This Woman (這個女人)
2025-02-23 14:30 - 16:00 | Museum of Fine Arts, Remis Auditorium, 465 Huntingon Ave, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115, United States
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Directed by Alan Zhang (China, 2023, 90 min.). Mandarin with English subtitles.

In her striking debut feature, filmmaker Alan Zhang explores the life of a 35-year-old woman who, after losing her decade-long job during the COVID-19 pandemic, returns to her hometown from Beijing. As she works to support herself, her parents, and her child, she navigates intimate relationships and embarks on a profound journey of self-discovery. Deftly blurring the line between documentary and fiction, This Woman delves into the role of women in contemporary Chinese society, questioning the expectations imposed on them and their pursuit of freedom. Awarded the Special Jury Prize at Visions du Réel, Zhang—a feminist activist, artist, and filmmaker—delivers a timely and courageous work that invites reflection and dialogue.

Watch the trailer.

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Fu Hualing in Conversation With Bill Alford
2025-02-28 12:20 - 13:20 | Austin Hall Room 308, 1515 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Professor Fu Hualing, Dean of the Faculty of Law; Warren Chan Professor in Human Rights and Responsibilities, University of Hong Kong

Discussant: Bill Alford, Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Fu Hualing is Professor of Law and holder of the Warren Chan Professorship in Human Rights and Responsibilities at the University of Hong Kong. He holds an LL.B. from Southwestern University in China, an M.A. from University of Toronto and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from OsgoodeHall.

Professor Fu’s current research focuses on the rise of human rights lawyering in China and its implications for political and legal reform in China, the politics of anti-corruption enforcement, popular justice (including China’s evolving use of mediation processes), and a critical re-assessment of rule of law reform in China in the past four decades. His other research areas include the constitutional status of Hong Kong, in particular central-local relationships in the Hong Kong context and national security legislation.

Professor Fu has published widely in various books and journals, and as a believer in collaborative approaches to scholarship has co-edited a number of significant studies including Hong Kong’s Constitutional Debate: Conflict over Interpretation (HKU Press 2000); National Security and Fundamental Freedoms: Hong Kong’s Article 23 Under Scrutiny(HKU Press 2005); Liu Xiaobo, Charter 08 and the Challenges of Political Reform in China (HKU Press 2012); Mediation in Contemporary China (Wildy, Simmonds and Hill 2017); Transparency Challenges Facing China (Wildy, Simmonds and Hill 2018); Socialist Law in Socialist East Asia (Cambridge University Press 2018); Authoritarian Legality in Asia: Formation, Development and Transition (Cambridge University Press 2020); The National Security Law of Hong Kong: Restoration and Transformation (HKU Press 2022); and Regime Type and Beyond: The Transformation of Police in Asia (Cambridge University Press 2023).

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Chinese Companies Going Global with Han Kun 汉坤
2025-03-07 12:15 - 13:45 | WCC 1015, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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As Chinese companies expand globally, they face regulatory scrutiny, geopolitical challenges, and cross-border disputes. Whether you’re a founder, investor, or legal professional, this is a must-attend event to understand the opportunities and challenges for Chinese companies going global. Experts from Han Kun Law Offices—including former partners from White & Case and Kirkland & Ellis—will share insights on navigating Rednote’s impact and managing compliance risks in global expansion.

Lunch will be provided.

Interested in deeper insights? In addition to the lunch talk, you can join a closed-door session with Han Kun partners after the talk. Indicate your interest when filling out the registration form: https://forms.gle/RrTYtxmc1ZvocDf36

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Layered Taiwan: Interwoven Pasts and Multiple Futures
2025-03-27 09:00 - 14:30 | Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, 121 Bay State Rd, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
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Moderated by Robert Weller, Boston University Department of Anthropology

Program Schedule9:00 AM Morning Opening Reception

9:15 AM Welcoming Remarks from BUCSA Director Robert Hefner9:20 AM Welcoming Remarks by TECO-Boston Education Director Cynthia Huang9:25 AM Opening Remarks by Rob Weller and Daigengna Duoer, Overview of the conference theme & Q&A format9:30 AM Lung-chih Chang, Director, National Museum of Taiwan History, “Representing the Multiple Histories of an Island Nation: The Case of the National Museum of Taiwan History”10:20 AM Coffee Break10:35 AM Scott Simon, Department of Anthropology, University of Ottawa, “Indigenous Peoples and States: Layers of History in Taiwan’s Archipelago”11:25 AM Lunch11:55 AM Catherine Tsai, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, “Becoming Japanese: Naturalization and Memories of the Taiwanese Diaspora in the Yaeyama Islands, 1960- 1972”12:45 PM Coffee Break1:00 PM Daigengna Duoer, Department of Religion, Boston University “Strata of Sovereignty: Buddhist Relic Diplomacy in Cold-War Taiwan”2:00 PM Panel Discussion & Closing RemarksReigster at: https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5hkRjs26vCwqmNg

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Trump’s U.S., Xi’s China, and Our Future: An Evening with the Award-Winning Creators of Face-Off: The U.S. vs China
2025-04-01 17:00 - 18:30 | Room S030, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speakers: Jane Perlez, Former Beijing Bureau Chief, The New York Times Rana Mitter, S.T. Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School Mia Lobel, Executive Producer, Face-Off: U.S. vs China Frank Zhou ’26, Associate Producer, Face-Off: U.S. vs China

****THE EVENT VENUE HAS CHANGED TO CGIS S030.****

Curious what China’s rise means for you as a young American or international student? Want an inside look at how Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter and leading producer craft longform reporting into an award-winning podcast? Want to hear one of the world’s leading experts break down what’s next in America’s competition with the world’s second-largest economy? Join a panel and meet-and-greet with top reporters and experts to celebrate Face-Off: The U.S. vs China | Season Two, an award-winning podcast from Airwave Media supported by the Carnegie Corporation and Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.Dumplings will be served.Register at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScoKcNAy8bBu0ybwvkpExt7xxvr_4OWYTGjdl2tuFcm1EI0zQ/viewform.

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Rong Ma — Powering a Just Transition: The Impacts of Place-Based Solar Expansion in Rural China
2025-04-03 15:30 - 16:30 | Pierce Hall Room 301, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Rong Ma, Associate Professor, China Agricultural University; Alumnus (Visiting Fellow) and Collaborator, Harvard-China Project

This paper examines a solar subsidy program in China designed to alleviate poverty among rural households in the country’s most impoverished regions through solar resource development. The empirical findings indicate a substantial increase in firm entry in treated villages, accompanied by a marked structural transformation characterized by a reduction in self-employment and a shift in land use from farmland to built-up areas. This surge in firm entry appears to be driven primarily by improvements in local electricity availability and reliability, as well as upgrades in local transportation infrastructure. Correspondingly, the analysis identifies a notable rise in local nightlight intensity and a reduction in regional nightlight disparities. Moreover, treated villages experience significant improvements in air quality, largely attributable to decreased pollutant emissions from nearby thermal power plants. By elucidating the impacts of place-based renewable energy policies, this study underscores their potential to foster a more equitable energy transition.

Dr. Rong Ma is an Associate Professor at China Agricultural University, College of Economics and Management. He is also a former Visiting Fellow and Collaborator with the Harvard-China Project. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Tsinghua University. His research focuses on environmental economics and energy economics.

Sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

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Reading Sinophone Women Writers
2025-04-04 14:00 - 17:00 | Plimpton Room (133), Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speakers: Li Zishu 黎紫書Lu Pin 鹿苹Lin Zhao 林棹Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹Moderators:David Der-wei Wang, Harvard UniversityMingwei Song, Wellesley CollegeDingru Huang, Tufts University

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Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Spring) Qingchun
2025-04-04 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-05-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002), documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili, near Shanghai, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes, Locarno and Venice film festivals, respectively. Taken together, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time, space and the material fabric of our lives.

Youth (Spring) QingchunThe first in Wang Bing’s opus centered on young migrant laborers in Zhili employs his trademark long takes and fixed camera setups, contrasting routine days of sewing, stitching and scissoring with bustling street scenes and after-hours sequences set in the workers’ cramped living quarters, chancing upon dramas that inevitably emerge from such a repetitive, cloistered and threadbare existence. While Zhili’s privatized structure and incentive-based production model allows for certain advantages over the kind of centrally governed factories seen in earlier Wang films like West of the Tracks (2002), it also leaves employees at the mercy of predatory managers, a situation the director depicts as an endless tug-of-war for better pay. With textbook rigor, Wang captures a new economic reality that, for all it promises, has only fostered a new form of exploitation. – Jordan Cronk

Directed by Wang Bing

France/Hong Kong/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2023, DCP, color, 215 min. Mandarin with English subtitles

General Admission Tickets $10, $8 Non-Harvard student, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20.

Tickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website.

Venue

Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Hard Times) Qingchun: Ku
2025-04-05 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-04-26 18:00 - 20:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002), documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili, near Shanghai, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes, Locarno and Venice film festivals, respectively. Taken together, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time, space and the material fabric of our lives.

Youth (Hard Times) Qingchun: Ku

Focusing on the factory laborers’ economic struggles and workplace conflicts, the second installment of Youth follows multiple narrative threads that stretch and tighten, sometimes to a breaking point of violence and despair. A young woman keeps making mistakes and must redo several batches of trousers, while her colleagues discuss ways to dodge the manager’s surveillance. Just released from police detention after an altercation with his boss, a young man searches in vain for his lost account book. Parents pore over sewing machines while their child plays with scissors and cell phones. From the balcony outside their shop, a group of workers watch their indebted boss beat up a fabric supplier and run away without paying their wages, so they sell the shop’s sewing machines while the landlord cuts the power and water of their living quarters. In another dark dorm, a worker who made tons of unsold denim recounts his participation in a labor riot and the ensuing police brutality. The exhaustion of overtime and deadlines thus alternates with the anxiety of dead time and wasted time, accruing into the bitterness at the core of Wang Bing’s trilogy.

Directed by Wang Bing

France/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2024, DCP, color, 226 min. Mandarin with English subtitles

General Admission Tickets $10, $8 Non-Harvard student, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20.

Tickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website.

Venue

Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Homecoming) Qingchun: Gui
2025-04-06 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-04-25 18:00 - 20:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002), documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili, near Shanghai, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes, Locarno and Venice film festivals, respectively. Taken together, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time, space and the material fabric of our lives.

Youth (Homecoming) Qingchun: Gui

The final installment of the Youth trilogyzooms in on a handful of workers as they return to their villages for the Lunar New Year, meanwhile zooming out spatially from Zhili’s garment workshops to China’s vast countryside. After seeking payment of their owed wages, Mu Fei and Dong Minyan board a packed train to Yunnan and take a van up a hazardous mountainside road. In homes decorated with giant Chairman Mao portraits, their parents speak of illnesses and injustices, debts and expenses. Firecrackers, a confetti gang, bride-carrying and karaoke create an exuberant atmosphere at Shi Wei’s and Liang Xianglian’s wedding. From the southwest mountains, the film moves to the lower Yangtze River to celebrate the God of Prosperity and another wedding banquet. After the holidays, the bride Fang Lingping takes her husband to Zhili and teaches him to sew. The last third of the film revisits familiar characters from Spring and Hard Times such as Lin Shao and Chen Wenting, no longer teenagers in love but young parents, uncertain how the cycles of seasonal labor will shape their children’s future.

Directed by Wang Bing

France/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2024, DCP, color, 160 min. Mandarin with English subtitles

General Admission Tickets $10, $8 Non-Harvard student, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20.

Tickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website.

Venue

China's Future: Navigating Geopolitics in a New Era
2025-04-07 17:00 - 18:00 | Room L-166, Littauer Building, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speakers:David J. Firestein, President and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations

Andrew S. Erickson, Professor of Strategy, U.S. Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute; Fairbank Center Visiting Scholar

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Daisy Yan Du - Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion
2025-04-11 12:00 - 13:30 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Daisy Yan Du, Associate Professor, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Moderator: Alexander Zahlten, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Registration appreciated for planning purposes.

Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion is the first edited volume that explores the multiple histories, geographies, industries, technologies, media, and transmedialities of Chinese animation, from early animated special effects to socialist classics, from computer-generated-imagery (CGI) blockbusters to edgy independent films, and from stop-motion to virtual reality.

Its fifteen chapters, grouped under the five themes of junctures, gender, identities, digitality, and practices, span a century of animation since the 1920s across mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the diasporic world. Derived from the 2021 Inaugural Conference of the Association for Chinese Animation Studies (ACAS), this volume as a whole defines Chinese animation studies as a new field of research emerging from the peripheries of modern Chinese literature and film studies on the one hand, and from the margins of Western and Japanese animation studies on the other. Incorporating diverse academic approaches and perspectives, this groundbreaking book is an indispensable guide for a rapidly growing community of scholars, students, animators, fans, and general readers interested in Chinese and world animation.

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Art of Journeys: From Ape Tales to the Monkey King Wukong
2025-04-11 13:00 - 17:30 | Sackler Building, Lower Level, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
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The launch of the hit game, “Black Myth: Wukong,” in August 2024 has sparked renewed interests in the many historical sites that inspired its stunning visuals. In fact, the role that players take on in the game—an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural abilities—also has many previous incarnations in the history of Chinese and East Asian art at large. The most well-known is perhaps the Monkey King Sun Wukong, from Wu Chengen’s monumental sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West. Yet Wu’s Journey to the West was only one of the converging points that brought together visual and textual sources dating back to the Han dynasty. Harvard Visual China’s 2025 Graduate Symposium presents two panels on the topic of Art of Journeys—From Ape Tales to the Monkey King Wukong.For a complete program and more information, visit https://www.harvardvisualchina.com/hvc-2025-symposium-info-reg.

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Indigenous Narrative: The Dynamic Biographies of gShen-rab Mi-bo, Founder of the Tibetan Bon Religion
2025-04-16 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Konchok Tsering, Assistant Professor, School for Tibetan Studies, Minzu University of China; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2024-25

Chair/Discussant: Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Harvard University

This talk delves into the transformation of gShen-rab Mi-bo’s life stories within the Tibetan Bon religion, examining three significant texts: mDo ‘dus, mdo gzer mig, and mdo dri med gzi brjid. Each biography, emerging from distinct historical contexts, showcases the evolving nature of Bon religious thought and its interaction with cultural influences. The mDo ‘dus, a concise tenth-century work, is recognized as an early foundational narrative. mdo gzer mig, believed to originate in the eleventh century, is essential for understanding the integration of Buddhist elements within Bon literature. The expansive mdo dri med gzi brjid, from the fourteenth century, enriches the narrative tapestry with folkloric and cultural details, demonstrating how oral traditions have shaped its development. This exploration highlights the adaptive storytelling of the Bon tradition, reflecting shifts in historical and cultural landscapes.

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Film Screening and Discussion: Caught by the Tides
2025-09-07 13:00 - 16:00
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Directed by Zhangke JiaStarring Tao Zhao, Zhubin LiCaught by the Tides (风流一代) is an ambitious, genre-blending film from acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Spanning over two decades, the film interlaces newly shot scenes with archival footage, fragments from Jia’s earlier films, and documentary-style material to create a haunting portrait of love, memory, and transformation in modern China.The story follows Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao), a dancer and club performer in early-2000s Datong, whose lover, Guo Bin, abruptly leaves to seek fortune elsewhere. Her quiet, persistent search for him unfolds against the sweeping changes of the nation—from mass displacement during the Three Gorges Dam project, to rapid urbanization, to the isolating years of the COVID-19 pandemic.Post Screening Panel DiscussionOur distinguished panel will delve into the film’s themes and its broader cultural, historical, and cinematic contexts. The discussion will consider how CAUGHT BY THE TIDES reflects on China’s transformation, the interplay between personal stories and national history, and the ways cinema can blur the lines between fiction and documentary.Shujen Wang, Professor of Media Studies, Emerson College; Research Associate, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard UniversityShujen Wang is the author of Framing Piracy: Globalization and Film Distribution in Greater China (2003), and her research spans media globalization, platformization, film distribution, piracy, and global copyright governance. She has contributed to multiple anthologies and published in leading journals including Cinema Journal, Film Quarterly, and International Journal of Cultural Studies. Former president of the Chinese Communication Association, Dr. Wang has served as a research associate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center since 2002 and sits on the editorial advisory boards of several peer-reviewed journals. Her work has been translated into Portuguese and Chinese, reflecting her global scholarly influence.Catherine Yeh, Professor of Chinese & Comparative Literature, Boston UniversityCatherine Yeh’s scholarship examines 19th- and 20th-century Chinese literary, media, and visual culture, with particular attention to the role of entertainment, literature, and “marginal” figures in driving modernity. Her books include Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910 and Performing the ‘Nation’ (co-edited, 2008). She has written extensively on Shanghai courtesan culture, the political novel, the entertainment press, and the rise of modern Chinese star culture. A recipient of numerous fellowships and research grants, Professor Yeh’s work illuminates the intersections of art, politics, gender, and urban modernity in China’s cultural transformation.Moderator: Xueping Zhong, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature, Chinese Culture, Film, Tufts UniversityXueping Zhong is the author of the Masculinity Besieged?: Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century.Screening at West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA 02465

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Taiwanese Politics and US-China-Taiwan Relations Under Trump 2.0
2025-09-22 17:00 - 18:30 | Room 101, Boston University Kilachand Center For Life Sciences and Engineering, 610 Commonwealth Ave,, Boston, Massachusetts, 02215, United States
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Speaker: S. Philip Tsu, National Taiwan UniversityThis talk will examine this following aspects of the US-Taiwan-China relations: 1. How Taiwan society views the US and China, and the main developments in Taiwan’s party politics/democratic governance since President Lai was inaugurated in 2024; 2. The implications of US foreign policy under Trump 2.0 for the trilateral relations; and 3. The implications of China’s policies toward the US and Taiwan for trilateral relations.

Registration link: https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_42BUHhGC7PoMxj8

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Is Authoritarian Constitutionalism an Oxymoron?
2025-09-26 12:20 - 13:20 | WCC 3007, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School; Co-editor, Oxford Handbook of Law and Authoritarianism

Professor Tushnet, who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies of constitutional review in the United States and around the world, and the creation of other “institutions for protecting constitutional democracy.” He also writes in the area of legal and particularly constitutional history, with works on the development of civil rights law in the United States and a history of the Supreme Court in the 1930s.

A light lunch will be provided.

Please note: In past years, most EALS talks were in Morgan Courtroom (Austin 308), but due to the construction project currently underway next to Austin Hall, we will hold most EALS talks in Wasserstein Hall this year.

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