The Rainbow Bridge

Why a bridge? Yale-China is a connection across nations, generations, languages, disciplines. It is a network of support, strengthened by personal relationships, like the beams of a traditional Chinese woven bridge.

In an effort to produce remote programs for Lunarfest (At Home) 2021, Yale-China developed programs that includes screen-free activities such as the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop construction kits featuring the rainbow bridge.

Register here to get your own free bridge construction kit designed by the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop with support from the Jane and William Curran Foundation, the International Association of New Haven, the Lawhorn Family, and the Yale-China Association.

“Along the River During Qingming Festival,” 清明上河图 with Valerie Hanson

In this video, Valerie Hansen takes us through a section of a Song Dynasty scroll (often called “Along the River During Qingming Festival,” 清明上河图) painted by Zhang Zeduan that features the rainbow bridge and the life of everyday people.

Don’t miss out on your free bridge construction kit (while supplies last) designed by Eli Whitney Museum. Register for a pickup date here.

About the Speaker

Valerie Hansen teaches Chinese and world history at Yale, where she is a professor of history. In the course of writing The Year 1000, she traveled to some twenty different countries and was a visiting scholar at Xiamen University in China, the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and the Collège de France in Paris.

Having lived in China for six-plus years, Valerie has visited at least 300 temples, climbed the Great Wall multiple times (once during a lightning storm), and posed next to the Terracotta Warriors eleven times. (All this in the company of her husband and three children).

Her books include The Silk Road: A New History, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1279, and Voyages in World History (co-authored with Kenneth R. Curtis).