1

Letter from the Director For the last newsletter I was at the Public Intellectuals Program meeting in D.C. This time I just came back from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Chinese Language Teachers' Association (ACTFL/CLTA) annual meeting and

World Languages Expo in Orlando, Florida. This was my second visit to this conference,

World Languages Expo in Orlando, Florida. This was my second visit to this conference, and this time I tried harder to publicize IUP, setting up a booth with a banner and brochures in the book exhibit. We had a stack of last month's newsletters and that New York Times article from November 17 about how China is now one of the top 5 study abroad destinations and IUP is the first study abroad program in China they mention! We had visits from IUP alumni, program

清华大学 | Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies ( 清华 IUP中文中心)

IUPe

ple Volume 2, Issue 2 November 2008

Showing off our new logo: Teachers Zhang Li, Chang Hong, Charles Laughlin (Director), Liao Qingrui, and Yao Wei

2

administrators and Chinese teachers from all over. Liao laoshi and Yao Wei laoshi, who is teaching at University of Virginia this year, gave papers in a panel we co-organized with the ACC program, and ACC's director Honggang Jin gave great comments. There have been significant improvements to the IUPeople website, including greater registration security to enhance the confidentiality and exclusivity of our community, a new masthead based on our new logo, and an automatic email notifier with RSVP function for upcoming events. More new changes are in the works, including a newsfeed that combines announcements with job listings and new profiles, a rearrangement of the front page into a newspaper format, and the calendar will be displayed with agenda view as the default, so you can see more of what's coming up at once. You will soon be receiving grade reports from the first module that will, for the first time, be automatically generated from our new database. In the future you will be able to ask us for a transcript of all your terms

Alumni Profile

Henri Benaim

I graduated from Yale University in 2006 with majors in Literature and East Asian Studies. After graduation I was in Hong Kong for the summer before coming up to Beijing for IUP in the fall of 2006 where I studied for one semester.

IUP has definitely helped my Chinese improve - I feel much more comfortable listening and reading. The former has proven to be quite important in my current job where I'm frequently speaking with Chinese

at IUP, whether you've been here once or four times, and get it in a day or two in pdf format by email. While there may be some minor glitches, this is a very powerful move forward in our management of information. Yes, we are also using the same database to keep track of alumni! Thanks to the efforts of some great students like Chryssa Rask, Joe Narus, Bobby O'Brien, Kitty Poundstone, and Carol Liu, teachers like Li Yun, Mi Zhenhua, Liu Yuming, Jia Yuting and many others, we have a nice line-up of Thanksgiving day activities, from bowling in the afternoon to pumpkin pie later on at Dufeng Cafe. Although we can't be with our families, thanks to the creativity and community feeling of our group this year, it's going to be a warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving anyway! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! And thanks again to Vivian Li for putting together another fine issue of IUPeople, and Kristen Looney, alum Henri Benaim, Hua Kuoman, Liu Yuming, Carol Liu, Annie Jonas, and Charles Loi for your contributions! Inside:

artists who are from all over the country and may not use the most "standard" Chinese. After IUP I had a Fulbright grant where I conducted research on Chinese contemporary art and its relationship to national identity and representation at the conclusion of my grant I decided to stay in Beijing and begin work as Director of PKM Gallery in Caochangdi

At the gallery I'm responsible for programming, sales, media relations, among other duties. I'm always eager to have IUP students or alum come visit me at the gallery. In addition to art, a big passion of mine is cooking, so I'm always up for eating and related activities.

Alumni Profile: Henri Benaim ٭ Trip to Luoyang ٭ Notes from North Korea ٭ PRC National Break Travels ٭

The IUPeople Newsletter is published monthly by the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies. Wen Bei Lou, 502, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 100084.

Visit us on the web at: http://ieas.berkeley.edu/iup Editor-in-chief: Charles Laughlin Managing Editor: Vivian Li

3

3-Day Excursion to Luoyang

For the fall semester’s long-distance trip, from October 17-20, IUP’ers traveled by train to the ancient city of Luoyang. Thanks to Jia Yuting laoshi’s careful planning, IUP’ers visited the famous White Horse Temple, Shaolin Temple and Longmen Grottoes.

Thanksgiving Party: November 27, 6 p.m. Enjoy a feast of turkey and pumpkin pie at Dufeng Canting! IUP Alumni Mixer: November 29, 7-10 p.m. Current students, alumni, and friends are invited to network at Element Fresh in Sanlitun “The Curious History of Fashion in Communist China” On December 4, 2:20 p.m. at Room 707, IUP alumnus Antonia Finnane, professor at University of Melbourne, will speak about the evolution of fashion in modern China

Mark Your Calendars!

Lila Buckley bonds with locals over their love for cameras

Sharon Nakhimovsky takes advantage of the down time on the train

Group Kodak moment in front of entrance to Shaolin Temple

A grand view of the amazing Longmen Grottoes devoted to Buddhism

Students and teachers alike were inspired by the rich culture at Luoyang On the left: Laoshi’s Liu Yuming, Sun Shuang, Zhang Rui, and Sun Hongyi recreate the Thousand-Armed Guanyin. On the right: IUP students Ben Roth and Alan Gaskill strike a fighting pose in homage to the Shaolin monks.

Photo: H

ua K

uom

an

Photo: H

ua K

uom

an

Photo: H

ua K

uom

an

Photo: L

iu Y

um

ing/H

ua K

uoman

Photo: H

ua K

uom

an

4

Notes from North Korea by Kristen Looney

From September 30-October 4 over the National Day break, I traveled to North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea- DPRK) with a Beijing-based company Koryo Tours. For the last two years at Harvard I took Korean classes and spent this past summer studying in South Korea. These basic language skills went a long way with my North Korean hosts. Our group of 12 Americans and 3 Korean tour guides visited the capital Pyongyang, the DMZ and nearby city Kaesong, and a scenic area with Buddhist temples Mount Myohyang. To be sure, we were not at liberty to explore on our own or interact with ordinary people. We could also not take photos unless we were given explicit permission. You may be wondering, as my parents did when I first broached the subject with them, why anyone would go to a country that is so closed off, and has such an atrocious human rights record. Believing that more dialogue and openness is better, and also that the perspective (no matter how flawed) of the DPRK government, which just celebrated its 60th anniversary, deserves to be understood, I went hoping to learn something about this place. Here’s my top ten list of impressions I took away: 10) The DPRK is poor. In the countryside, you see people scavenging for food. In the cities, most people walk and energy is rationed to people depending on government-determined criteria.

9) The DPRK is closed off. There is one place in the country where you can send email for 9 euros each. There are 3 government controlled TV channels and government controlled radio is broadcast over loudspeakers all over the countryside. 8) Anti-Americanism is intense. There are propaganda posters of North Koreans killing American soldiers and slogans about “American imperialists” everywhere. A little over 1,000 Americans have been there since 1953. 7) Commerce and street life is minimal. People walk places; they don’t stop and linger. I saw three ads for cars between the airport and downtown Pyongyang, and besides that I only saw political slogans. There are only a few restaurants, stores and juice stands. 6) There are lots of Chinese. Chinese tourists, businessmen, and officials driving nice cars could be seen everywhere we went. 5) Only a few hundred North Koreans, including our guides, speak foreign languages and have experience abroad. They come back to serve their country, but (reading between the lines) also because their families cannot leave. 4) North Koreans want diplomatic relations with the U.S. They want an embassy, troops withdrawn from the South, and the Americans to stay out of North-South Korean relations. 3) North Koreans are obsessed with the idea of reunification. Every person I talked to claims to have family in the south. 2) The Cult of Kim Ilsung, who has been dead since 1994, is beyond what I expected. Everyone wears pins, the news mentions his name dozens of times in any given broadcast, political slogans about him are everywhere, and at his massive mausoleum you can see North Koreans moved to tears. 1) The Arirang mass games is unlike anything you’ll ever see-100,000 people perfectly coordinated to put on a socialist-realist, Kim-dynasty worshiping gymnastics spectacle that is way more low tech and way more memorable than Beijing’s opening ceremony for the Olympics, which is the closest thing to which it can be compared.

Student Travelogue National Day Break: Sept. 27-Oct.5

Left to right: Carol Liu visits the Al Fateh Grand Mosque in Bahrain; Charles Loi discovered that the Olympic spirit had reached even the tourism entrepreneurs in Xinjiang; Alex Wald ganbei's with one of the younger participants of the Tsingtao International Beer Festival; IUP’ers Annie Jonas, Jill Schultz, and Ben Roth share a few drinks with fellow revelers at the beer festival

Photo: C

arol Liu

Photo: A

nnie Jon

as

Photo: A

nnie Jon

as

Photo: C

harles L

oi