To advance The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s mission “to combine tradition with modernity, and to bring together China and the West,” this symposium will address the intellectual and cultural interactions between early modern China and Europe, 1500-1800.  To do so, each talk will begin with a discussion of a particular book in the accompanying exhibition “Bringing Together China and the West: Books of Early Modern Western Sinology in the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library”, which the speakers will use to introduce a variety of topics in China-Western relations, including religious exchange, visual culture, literary influence, Chinese and Western medicine, historiography, translations of the classics, etc.

There will be two panels.  The first, entitled “Art and Culture between China and the West,” will address the patterns of entanglement of Chinese and Western religions, art and classical traditions with particular reference to the Ming-era Jesuit missions in China. The second panel, entitled “Translating Between China and the West,” will focus on the ways that texts and cultural forms changed in the procession of translation or transmission during the Qing dynasty that saw increased interactions between China and the West.

In sum, the symposium will offer a portrait of this vibrant period of Chinese-Western relations, thereby giving members of the university community and the public at large an opportunity to consider how we might better “bring together China and the West.”

Symposium information