Welcome to my new neighborhood
Last month I had the unusual opportunity to visit five different countries/regions in Asia, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong/Macau, and Korea. This was the first of a two-part tour that I am conducting of schools in Asia as part of our global recruitment efforts for Duke Kunshan University’s new undergraduate degree program, which we are launching in fall 2018.
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Everyone who studies Chinese as a foreign language—or any foreign language for that matter—intensively and long enough will be familiar with this phenomenon. Peter Hessler writes about it in his own books about his experiences in China. The idea is that when you learn another language and culture deeply enough, you take on an alternate identity when speaking that language and engaging with that culture.
Read MoreLast week, the Wall Street Journal published an essay by Daniel Bell, a noted scholar of Chinese philosophy who teaches at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The essay came with the intriguing title “Why Anyone can be Chinese”. Now I call this going down the rabbit hole of identity politics. To do so is like stepping onto a minefield, and Dr. Bell bravely if somewhat naively did so when publicly expressing his wish to be considered Chinese.
Read MoreMy previous journal entry was about my transformation from a science and math nerd to a China/Asian Studies nerd and how the liberal arts experience at Dartmouth enabled that transformation. Perhaps I overstated the case a bit. Looking back on those days, while I professed to have an interest in science, ironically it was more from a humanities perspective all along. Maybe that's why I felt an affinity with the scholars of ancient China with their multiple interests all grounded in a basic love for humanities and arts.
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