China Seminar

Thursday, 12 March, 2015, 12 noon

Maple Garden Restaurant
909 Isenberg Street, Honolulu

$20.00 for Friends of the East-West Center members, EWC and UH students
$25.00 for non-members
Luncheon served after the talk

The World I See: Through the Lens of a Young Chinese Journalist

Wei Zhu

Through almost ten years of working as a photographer and photo editor for Xinhua News Agency, Wei Zhu has been to many places capturing news events through the lens of his camera. Whether it was the catastrophic scene of 2008 Sichuan earthquake or standing in front of the runway during New York catwalk fashion shows or covering war-torn Pakistan, Wei Zhu has witnessed the pains and joy of people around the world. He has a feeling of honor, passion and sense of mission. Every time he grabs his camera and aims the viewfinder, he tries to capture the most symbolic moments with strong emotions. He tries to explore the deeper meaning behind the scene and gives an aesthetic way of viewing the world from his angles and composition. Zhu will present a slideshow of the world as seen through his lens and perspective of the world as seen from a photographer who is part of China’s younger generation.

Wei Zhu entered Xinhua News Agency in 2005. His major reporting as photographer and photo editor including Beijing summit of China-Africa Cooperation Forum, APEC summit in Sydney, the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, Beijing Olympic Games, Pakistani Presidential Election. From November 2009 to December 2011, he was a photojournalist/editor with Xinhua’s North America Bureau based in New York. During that time he covered general news in New York and major news in the United States, including the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico, awarding ceremony of the Oscars, commemoration ceremony of the 9/11 attacks, annual meeting of the United Nation’s General Assembly, New York Fashion Week, Occupy Wall Street, etc.

To RSVP, please call 944-7111 or email friends@eastwestcenter.org.

Click here to download the event flyer.

China Seminar

Thursday, 12 February, 2015, 12 noon
Maple Garden Restaurant
909 Isenberg Street, Honolulu

$20.00 for Friends of the East-West Center members, EWC and UH students
$25.00 for non-members
Luncheon served after the talk

Chinese New Year Food: Sights, Sounds, and Symbols

Daniel W.Y. Kwok

The relationship between thought and food is a hallmark of the China Seminar. This relationship at Chinese New Year impinges on one’s senses with particular relevancy. Professor Kwok, for this session of the China Seminar, offers an encounter of the foods and occasions of this temperate zone civilization at this time of year.

In lieu of a biographical sketch, Daniel Kwok, founding convener of the China Seminar already known to seminarians, has this to say in the “Foreword” that he wrote in a cookbook by his mother (he edited in 2013 just before his stroke in October that year).  “Who does not remember a mother’s cooking? How many, though, can boast of a mother with over two hundred recipes of sensible Chinese cooking?”  The cookbook also includes his essay: “The Pleasures of the Chinese Palate,” offering broader considerations of Chinese food beyond the new year.

To RSVP, please call 944-7111 or email friends@eastwestcenter.org.

Click here to download the event flyer.

CHINA SEMINAR

Thursday, 8 January, 2015, 12 noon
Maple Garden Restaurant
909 Isenberg Street, Honolulu

$20.00 for Friends of the East-West Center members, EWC and UH students
$25.00 for non-members
Luncheon served after the talk

Same Bed, Different Dreams:
The Umbrella Movement as Seen by Xi Jinping and Hong Kong’s Sandwich Class

Richard Hornik

Although press coverage of the protest movement in Hong Kong has been extensive, it has largely failed to address the underlying motivations of the two most important sides to the conflict: China’s top leadership, as personified by Xi Jinping, and Hong Kong’s middle class. While the outside world has focused on student and activist demands for a more democratic selection of the Territory’s Chief Executive, the support from large sections of the public is based on a sense that Hong Kong’s economic advantages are dwindling because of ineffective leadership by Hong Kong’s top officials. At the same time, China’s leaders are less interested in accommodating Hong Kong’s demands than was the case even a few years ago. A mutually agreeable solution is highly unlikely.

Richard Hornik, currently a lecturer in the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, is a journalist with over 30 years of global experience. He was executive editor of AsiaWeek, deputy chief of correspondents and news service director of Time in New York, and he served as Time’s bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong. He co-authored Massacre in Beijing: China’s Struggle for Democracy, with Donald Morrison, and has written for Foreign Affairs, Fortune, Smithsonian, The New York Times and Wall St. Journal. He has an M.A. in Russian studies from George Washington University and a B.A. in political science from Brown University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was Journalist-in-Residence at the East-West Center. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong in 2012 and will be a Lecturer at UH this semester.