By ECLC Staff September 29, 2026
The ECLC lecture series continues this fall/winter term 2026/27 with five lectures jointly organised by the European partner universities and the School of International Studies of Peking University. The lectures will be held online via Zoom and physically at the School of International Studies.
The topic of this fall term’s lecture series is ‘Things Chinese’: What Objects can tell us about China’s Past and Present.
October 15th 2026 12:00 CET/ 18:00 CST, Prof. Roland Altenburger (University of Würzburg), A Decorated Liquor-Warmer Pewter from the Late Qing: Sociability, Literary Games, and the Everyday-Life Significance of the Red Chamber Dream
This talk will take as its focal point a craft item once incidentally purchased on a flea market in Europe: a hexagonal enamel pewter for liquor warming, likely from the late Qing (though a fake stamp at the bottom claims it to be from the Xuande period of the Ming). On each of its six sides, named beauties from the Red Chamber Dream (Honglou meng) are depicted. While not much can be said about the “biography” of this object, it is safe to assume that it was an object of urban plebeian culture. It can tentatively be recontextualized through its practical as well as social functions, the sociability of liquor consumption, and the literary gaming practices implied by its decorations. On this basis, the talk will set out to explore the Red Chamber Dream’s ubiquitous presence and rich significance in the everyday-life material culture of mid- to late-Qing China.
June 4th 2026 12:00 CET/ 18:00 CST, Prof. Mette Thunø (Aarhus University), China’s Diaspora Governance since the late 19th Century
This talk analyses the evolution of China’s diaspora governance from the late Qing period to the present as an adaptive process shaped by shifting domestic priorities and international conditions. It advances a four-dimensional framework—sovereignty, ideology, security, and pragmatism—as recurring governing imperatives structuring state engagement with populations abroad. Rather than a linear progression, diaspora governance is conceptualised as a dynamic configuration in which these imperatives remain continuously present but are reweighted across historical periods. I argue that diaspora governance reflects broader transformations in contemporary statecraft, in which sovereignty remains formally territorial but is increasingly enacted through de-territorialised and networked practices radiating from a sovereign centre.
October 22nd 2026 12:00 CET/ 18:00 CST, Dr. Xiang Wei (Tsinghua University), From Chang’an to Nara: The Influence of Tang Culture on Japan
This lecture explores the transmission of Tang culture to Japan and its gradual integration into Japanese society, drawing on a wide range of visual materials, including ancient picture scrolls and photographs of historical sites. Beginning with Nara, a capital deeply influenced by Chinese urban planning, the lecture follows figures such as Kibi no Makibi, a Japanese envoy who traveled to Tang China, and Jianzhen, the Chinese monk who journeyed to Japan, to illustrate the movement of people, knowledge, and ideas across the sea. It will also introduce historical sites such as Tōdai-ji and Tōshōdai-ji, along with musical instruments and other objects preserved in the Shōsōin. Through these examples, the lecture examines the profound influence of Tang culture on Japanese architecture, literature, and art, as well as its lasting presence and transformation in Japan today.
October 29th 2026 12:00 CET/ 19:00 CST, Li Peiwei (PKU/University of Tokyo), Why Go to the Mountains: Landscape, Reclusion, and Freedom in Chinese Thought
Why have mountains played such an important role in traditional Chinese culture? Why did many scholars and writers choose, or imagine, a life away from official life and social expectations? This lecture explores three main questions: What did mountains and landscapes mean? Why did people choose reclusion? And how did they create their own spaces of retreat within everyday life? The lecture begins with early Chinese thinkers such as Confucius and Zhuangzi and their different views of human beings, nature, and society. It then turns to the tradition of reclusion, especially the example of Tao Yuanming. In these traditions, mountains were more than natural places. They could also become spaces for questioning official careers, conventional ideas of success, and established social values. Through poetry, landscape painting, and gardens, the lecture will also show how the mountains became not only actual places of retreat, but also a cultural and imaginative space that could be created within everyday life. It will end with a broader question: Does freedom require leaving society, or can we create a space for freedom within society itself?
November 5th 2026 12:00 CET/ 19:00 CST, Prof. Andreas Steen (Aarhus University), Sonic Objects from the Late Qing: Records and the Infinite Circulation of Sound
This presentation begins in 1906 and focuses on the history of sound recording in China. I follow a particular set of shellac records made in Hong Kong and Shanghai by a Berlin-based record company. The music records were exported and sold in China, and a selection was donated to the Phonogram-Archive in Berlin to support academic research. The new materiality of sound enabled different travelogues of the mass-produced static “sonic object” in China and Asia, as well as in Europe. I will approach the shellac records as a historical and cultural sonic source, investigate their recording and distribution, and add a sonic perspective to Sino-foreign interaction in the late Qing period. The records’ later circulation in China and abroad demonstrates that their popularity and consumer value were low. However, as rare products of the past, they are sought by both sound archives and private collectors today, thereby still demonstrating their historical, cultural, and mnemonic value.
November 12th 2026 12:00 CET/ 19:00 CST, Jun.-Prof. Emily Graf (University of Tübingen), „A “Bronze Woman” among “Bronze Men”: Random Notes on Thinking about the Body in Medical Museums in China“
In this talk, I analyze one particular object on display at the Shanghai Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The object in focus is a bronze figure cast in the early 18th century (ca. 1744) during the reign of the Manchu emperor Qianlong 乾隆 (r. 1736–1796) of the Qing Dynasty. It is a nude female figure, with thin lines engraved on her body representing channels, and hundreds of small holes along these lines representing acupoints. She is a fascinating exception to the rule of how bodies were represented in imperial China, and her existence raises many questions about how the female body was gendered in medicine: How did this figure differ from prior visual and material representations of acupuncture knowledge, such as two-dimensional images (e.g. Mingtang tu 明堂圖 or tongren tu 銅人圖) and other three-dimensional figures made from terracotta, lacquer, and bronze that featured predominantly male bodies (e.g. tongren 銅人)? Since when and why was acupuncture knowledge gendered? And how was this particular female figure connected to emperor Qianlong’s aim to create a new orthodoxy of medical knowledge? By highlighting the materiality of this object and how it was initially placed within the imperial palace and later within museum space, this lecture shows that the entanglement of the body, the state and the cosmos was not only a key concept in understanding acupuncture, but that the materiality of the body in turn also impacted the relationship between the body, state and cosmos. Its materiality opened up the possibility for religious, gendered and other unorthodox forms of representation to enter orthodox space and medical knowledge.
Students may join the lecture series in person at the School of International Studies at Peking University or via Zoom.
