Source: Boya (Liberal Arts) College
Written by: Boya (Liberal Arts) College
Photo by: Cai Shanshan
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On May 27-29, 2016, the International Symposium on “China and Global Modernity (1784-1919), organized by Boya (Liberal Arts) College and the School of Foreign Languages, was held at the South Campus, Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU). Over 30 scholars from major universities and institutions home and abroad, including University of Illinois, U.S.A, University of York and University of Warwick, U.K., Victoria and Albert Museum, U.K., Australian National University, Australia, The University of Hong Kong, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Fudan University, participated in the Symposium and discussed significant individuals, cases, and events which manifest and reveal the complexities of the historical relations between China and the West in “the Long Nineteenth Century”.

At the opening ceremony, Professor Jun MA, Vice President of SYSU, extended the warmest welcome to all the guests and briefly introduced the history of SYSU. He made a special reference to the historical role that Guangzhou had played in shaping Chinese modernity. Located in Guangzhou, SYSU is one of the leading universities in China and an important base for training high-level talents in scientific research, providing service to society, and carrying on the cultural traditions. Professor MA believed SYSU was the most proper venue for such an international symposium.

There were 23 plenary speakers in total and around a hundred students and faculties, some of whom travelled to Guangzhou from Beijing, Sichuan, Hong Kong and other parts of China to join the meeting. The participants have spoken very highly of the meeting. Professor Guoqi XU, distinguished historian from the University of Hong Kong, noted that this was by far the best international symposium he had ever attended in mainland China. Professor Robert Markley, W.D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor of English at University of Illinois and Editor of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, said that it was an excellent conference and the organizers did all the participants pride. Professor Hamashita Takeshi, a leading historian of world history at SYSU, said that it was a very professional, rigorous, and serious inter-disciplinary international symposium. The complete success of this Symposium would considerably contribute to SYSU’s international reputation.

Professor Qingsheng TONG, Chair of the Organizing Committee of the Symposium, who was formerly Head of School of English at the University of Hong Kong, joined Boya (Liberal Arts) College and School of Foreign Languages of SYSU as Chair Professor of English in 2015. He explained that this symposium was the third of the serial international meetings on the cultural relations between China and the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first two meetings were held in the University of Sydney in 2013 and Chinese University of Hong Kong 2014 respectively. In response to the shared wish to continue the collective efforts to understand China’s historical relations with the West in the modern world, this symposium discussed the possibility of setting up an international association for the study of the cultural relations between China and the modern world and the plans to organize the fourth meeting in Australia in 2017 and fifth meeting in the U.S. in 2018. The conference organizers agreed to produce an edited volume of selected conference papers.