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It can sometimes be challenging to find the time to explore and get out into the city of Nanjing while busy with school activities and studying for classes. That’s why I took advantage of the last week of our long Chinese New Year holiday to dedicate some time exploring new parts of the city. I’d heard great things about the Jiangsu Art Museum from both teachers and classmates so I hopped on the subway with a friend and we made our way over.  The Jiangsu Art Museum is located in the heart of the city, only three subway stops away from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and right next the enormous and also well worth-visiting Nanjing Library. The Nanjing Library is closer in size to a shopping mall and its impressive modern architecture makes it impossible to miss. Arriving at the Jiangsu Art Museum, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that entrance is free to everyone. The museum is a vast, multi-story building but only a select number of galleries are open at a particular time. I rec...

I was given the wonderful opportunity to have a conversation with Hopkins-Nanjing Center alumnus and award winning author, translator, and Professor of modern Chinese history at the University of London, Julia Lovell. Professor Lovell was a certificate student at HNC from 1997-98 and has since published numerous acclaimed historical writings, including The Opium War: Dreams, Drugs, and the Making of Modern China , The Great Wall: China Against the World , and The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for the Nobel Prize in Literature . Prior to our interview, Professor Lovell had been traveling on academic leave to conduct research on Maoism in Nepal and India. Can you briefly introduce the research you’ve been doing on the propagation of Maoism outside of China? You described your recent work as tracking the “transnational history of Maoism”, what does that imply? Transnational history, as I see it, is not just tracking the global travels of certain ideas; it’s exploring how the...

Meet Brennan Leong, a 2nd year student in the Master of Arts in International Studies Program. Brennan is an International Economics concentrator who is currently writing a graduate thesis in Chinese on the empirical factors that influence the craft beer market in China. Partnering with the Kentucky company, Alltech, alongside a number of Chinese breweries, Brennan is assessing market entry for craft beers, both domestic and foreign. A double-major in Chinese and Neurobiology from the University of Wisconsin, Brennan has previously worked in the health care industry as a children's behavior therapist and was enrolled in medical school. Ethnically half-Chinese, a longing to improve his language abilities and a compulsion to grow closer to a culture he was disconnected with in his childhood inspired Brennan to move to Chongqing to teach English. On a whim, a friend brought up the possibility of attending the Hopkins-Nanjing Center to further his academic study while simul...

Current MAIS student and Laura Chen Memorial Fellow, Maguire Padley, thesis research on gender inequality in Chinese sports led her to start a women’s sports mentoring program at a local Nanjing elementary school. Read about her experience below.    When I first moved to China almost five years ago, I was looking for a way to get involved in sports and decided to take up soccer. To my surprise, it was impossible to find a women’s team to join. Consequently, I began to play for a men’s team. I was astonished to find that every time I stepped on the field, the men on the opposing team would be completely baffled, advising me that a woman should not be playing soccer. While this experience was bewildering to me at first, it soon became a regular part of my life in China. For example, when lifting weights at the gym I would routinely be told that this kind of activity wasn’t for women. This was so contrary to my impression of women’s sports in China. For years, I had ...