Considered by many to be the father of modern Chinese literature and widely recognized as one of China’s best and most influential authors, Lu Xun was born on September 25, 1881 in Shaoxing of eastern China’s Zhejiang Province. His outlook and writing career were bound up with Shaoxing, a famous water town with a long […]

Join China Institute to celebrate the publication of Visions: East and West 松風山月, Translations of Selected Tang Poems, a new book created by a group of students studying Tang Dynasty (618–907) poetry with Ben Wang, Senior Lecturer and Co-Chair of the Renwen Society at China Institute. A true labor of love, the book presents translated […]

Will China achieve its tech dreams? It all depends on whether it can produce advanced semiconductor chips, the tiny piece of metal that are crucial to the functionality of smartphones, modern cars, and even hearing aids. It’s the access to those tiny chips that Beijing’s tech ambitions ultimately will pivot on. Join us as two […]

China Institute is honored to welcome Chen Kaige, one of China’s greatest directors, in conversation with filmmaker Janet Yang and film expert Richard Pena, to discuss Yellow Earth, which revolutionized the way films were watched and created in China, and its enduring legacy nearly 40 years after its release.

How will artificial intelligence change our world? On September 16, join Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, and celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan, author of sci-fi sensation Waste Tide, online for the launch of their new book AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future. The authors will discuss AI’s […]

China Institute welcomes Confucianism expert Zu-yan Chen, who will introduce Confucius, China’s greatest sage, and the philosophy that has shaped Chinese governance, values, and ideas for thousands of years. Following the lecture, contemporary China expert Zak Dychtwald will join Professor Chen in a conversation about Confucius’ legacy and his relevance in today’s hyper-modern China. Scholar, […]

Online lecture. Join China Institute’s SVP of Programs, Dinda Elliott, for an online program on September 8 at 12:00 PM, as she shares a meaningful person, place, and thing from her many decades in China as a newsmaker and editor, in a special episode of the Person Place Thing podcast with former New York Times […]

The 18th-century novel The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin is a bildungsroman, a tale of a battle between the flesh and the spirit, a mixture of mysticism, romanticism, realism and fatalism, a record of Taoist-Buddhist disenchantment and enlightenment, and a critique of a society abiding by the rules of Confucianism, and a novel […]