Upcoming Events

Online Sinology Fortnightly (2026 Spring)

To celebrate the essence of traditional culture and deepen academic dialogue on campus, the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology has introduced the “Sinology Fortnightly” series. This academic event invites emerging scholars of Chinese and Sinological studies worldwide to collaboratively explore classic texts and share scholarly insights, thereby igniting intellectual creativity and expanding perspectives. At present, the “Sinology Fortnightly” series is primarily conducted online and warmly welcomes enthusiastic participation from peers eager to explore these profound topics.

No registration is required for this lecture series. All are welcome to attend each lecture with the following Zoom meeting details:

https://hkbu.zoom.us/j/97528322208?pwd=XTbKY99dYD7qfHNEFs2ULD4lmvGbDw.1

Meeting ID: 975 2832 2208

Password: 916442

HKBU students: For CCL attendance, please (1) log in Zoom using HKBU email account, with your name as “STUDENT ID NO. + NAME”, and (2) complete and submit the Co‐curricular Learning Evaluation Form after the activity in 3 working days.

Note: A CCL-recognised event must be at least 1 hour long. Please observe the requirements if students wish to update the attendance record.

Below are details of the seminars in the 2026 Spring:

Session 1

2026/3/12 | 10:30–12:00 | Putonghua

Trauma, Transience, and Traversal: Philosophizing on Time through Su Shi’s Huangzhou-Period Literary Works

ZHENG Zemian

Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Research Interest: Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, History of Chinese Philosophy

Abstract: During his demoted exile in Huangzhou, Su Shi wrote a number of literary works that explore the experience of time. In order to heal the trauma inflicted by the Crow Terrace Poetry Case, he had to philosophically see through the temporal nature of trauma. Trauma is a dialectic of transience. For a traumatic event to constitute trauma, it must involve a sudden, unforeseen deprivation and, at the same time, leave the victim unable to dispel it. The past is gone, yet it refuses to fade into the past, thus giving rise to a dialectical structure of intertwined contradictions of temporal experience. The young Su Shi was already acutely sensitive to transience. In his writings from Huangzhou, he emphasized the relativity of inner temporal experience, on serendipity, and on those moments of encounter between self and others—moments imbued with a sense of déjà vu, wherein the distances between past, present, and future are traversed. His “First Poetic Exposition on the Red Cliff” was influenced by the Surangama Sutra, while the crane dream in his “Second Poetic Exposition on the Red Cliff” advanced the discussion on transience and eternity in the first one, because it indicates the idea that transience is the repercussion of traversal. This idea can be articulated via the Huayan tenet of interpenetration between past, present, and future, a school Su Shi knew well. This crane dream is comparable to the butterfly dream of Zhuangzi in philosophical depth.

Session 2

2026/3/26 | 15:00–16:00 | Putonghua

Between Seclusion and Withdrawal from Officialdom: The Patriotic Writings and Identity Aspirations of Female Poets in Dynastic Transition Periods

LIU Yihan

Lecturer, School of Humanities, Jinan University

Research Interest: Women’s Literature and Culture in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Late Qing and Republican Literature

Abstract: The Ming–Qing dynastic transition profoundly affected not only the political world of the literati but also the writings and self-understandings of women poets. Scholarship on remnant literature has primarily focused on male loyalists, leaving women’s responses to dynastic change insufficiently explored. This study examines women poets active during the transition period and situates their writings within concrete historical contexts. It identifies three broad identity positions: female loyalists, wives of officials who served the new regime, and women who chose reclusion. Women in these different circumstances expressed their responses to political upheaval in distinct ways. Some continued established moral discourses of loyalty through elegies for the fallen dynasty and writings on chastity. Others conveyed anxiety and ethical conflict within families that accommodated the new rule. Those who withdrew from public life often turned to themes of landscape and everyday experience. These writings show how women engaged with dynastic change through poetic expression despite their exclusion from formal political participation.

Session 3

2026/4/13 | 14:30–16:00 | Putonghua

Capturing the British “Princess”: A Historiographical Inquiry and Knowledge Circulation of the Anne Noble Incident, 1840-1930s

WANG Zewei

PhD, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University

Research Interest: Literature and Culture of the Qing Dynasty, Sino-Western Cultural Exchange in the Qing Dynasty

Abstract: This lecture explores the 1840 capsizing of the Kite off the coast of Yuyao, Zhejiang, which led to the imprisonment of a British woman named Anne Noble and the famous story of the “British princess.” Beyond reconstructing the full scope of the incident and resolving “Rashomon” of historical details, this presentation investigates the dissemination, textual variation, and historical recording of related documents within East Asia. Research shows the “princess narrative” traveled from Ningbo to Jiangsu-Zhejiang Region and then to Japan; it was more than just a literary creation by Qing merchants and English intellectuals. These records underwent layered accumulation and textual variation in both China and Japan from the start, eventually re-intersecting with Western sources in the History of Qing and Modern History after the Meiji era. Since the Republic of China era, scholars have heavily referenced these findings. Through the lens of this incident, T we can glimpse the micro-details of knowledge circulation and historical construction in modern East Asia. More importantly, we gain insight into the war memory biases formed by the different positions of China, Britain, and Japan. These diverse perspectives lead to significant variations and uncertainties in how history is written.

Session 4

2026/4/30 | 11:00–12:30  | Putonghua

Between Fact and Fiction: Two Approaches in the Studies of the Shanhaijing

LEE Wa Lun Valente           

Lecturer, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Research Interest: Classical Chinese Texts, Chinese Paleography, Early Chinese Mythology and Religions

Abstract: “Strangeness” of the Shanhaijing have long been one of the central issues in textual criticism of this work. Sima Qian stated that he “did not dare to speak of” the “strange things” recorded therein, whereas Liu Xin and Guo Pu regarded these so called “strange things” as in fact integral parts of the real world, with “strangeness” depending solely on the observer’s horizon; scholars of the Ming and Qing periods generally sought for verification of its records. In short, most scholars have taken the factual truth of its contents as the primary criterion for assessing its textual value, so that evaluations have oscillated repeatedly between reading it as a “factual record” and dismissing it as “fabrication.” The presupposition that documentary factuality is the sole source of the work’s value can be called as the “record of fact paradigm.” Parallels to it stands what may be called the “creative work paradigm.” In his studies of the Shanhaijing, Gu Jiegang distinguished between “belief” and “scholarship”; meanwhile, against the backdrop of introduction of folk studies, the text began to be valued as an important source for folk medicine; later, frameworks such as “imaginative geography” and “sacred geography” were also brought to bear in reassessing its status. Taken together, these approaches suggest that the textual value of the Shanhaijing need not depend on the verifiability of its contents; rather, as a cultural product and intellectual work, it possesses an integral value in its own right. This talk will first lay out these two lines of scholarship, then evaluate their respective strengths, limitations, and potential complementarity, and finally explore how they may jointly open up new directions for the study of the Shanhaijing.

Session 5

2026/5/11 | 15:00–16:30 | Putonghua

Memories on the Margins: Nanyang Aging Women and the Folk Perspective in Late Qing Classical Fiction

LAN Qian

Senior Research Assistant, Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology, Hong Kong Baptist University

Research Interest: Chinese Classical Tales

Abstract: TBC

Session 6

2026/5/27 | TBC | Putonghua

Relocation of Emperors’ Portraits: Storage of Qing Emperors’ Portraits in the Phoenix Building, Mukden Palace

DU Wang

Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Chinese Culture, China National Academy of Arts

Research Interest: Political History of the Qing Dynasty, Historical Philology / Documentary Studies of Ming–Qing History

Abstract: TBC