Past Events | Beijing International Society

You are here

  1. Home
  2. Past Events
Thursday, December 6, 2007 - 19:30

Celebrating the Life of Rewi Alley

Michael Crook and Panel

The young man, Rewi Alley, came to China from New Zealand after fighting in WW I . He stayed, worked tirelessly for the Chinese people, traveled extensively and died here at 90 years old. This year is the 110th anniversary year of the birth of Rewi Alley, 80th anniversary of his arrival, and the 20th anniversary of his death. As his birthday (2 December) approaches, our dear friend, Michael Crook, will guide a panel of experts through their recollections of Rewi Alley's life in China. Rewi Alley was first a fireman in Shanghai, then a social reformer, educator, writer, poet,...
Thursday, November 15, 2007 - 19:30

The Roof is on Fire: Global Climate Change and the Effects on Tibet

Princess Yabshi Pan Rinzinwangmo
Daughter of the 10th Panchen Lama

For the first time in China, Princess Yabshi Pan Rinzinwangmo (尧西•班•仁吉旺姆), daughter of the 10th Panchen Lama, will discuss environmental challenges facing Tibet, her father's conservationist legacy, and ongoing efforts to save Tibet's precious natural wonders during an engaging evening with the BIS. Masterfully interweaving historic, religious, cultural and scientific approaches to understanding climate change, Princess Rinzinwangmo's discussion will highlight the long-standing importance of environmental conservation in Tibetan culture. She will also address how Tibetan Buddhism...
Thursday, November 8, 2007 - 19:30

Rocks and Art

Hugh Scogin
Attorney and Professor of Law

Ever notice the strangely shaped rocks that one sees mounted around Beijing in public spaces and in private homes? We tend to take them for granted, but believe it or not, they are also in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, Smithsonian, etc., not as decorations, but as art objects in themselves. For centuries they have been collected and esteemed in China as one of the highest forms of art, combining the abstraction of Pollack and the found art of Duchamp a thousand years earlier. They provide a window into Chinese views of nature and art.
Saturday, November 3, 2007 - 19:30

Outing: Traces of Eunuchs in the Western Suburbs of Beijing

Michael Crook
Tour Leader

For our fall outing, Michael Crook will take us on a search for traces of eunuchs to the village of Moshikou, in the western suburbs of Beijing. Said to have numbered in the tens of thousands during the Ming Dynasty, eunuchs effectively controlled a full range of palace service and supply responsibilities, giving many of them vast powers and wealth and in some cases encroaching on imperial power. Identified by the Qing as a cause of the Ming collapse, in the 17th century, eunuchs were stripped of many of their powers although by the end of the dynasty they had regained some measure of...
Thursday, October 25, 2007 - 19:30

The Renovation of a Courtyard House in Bell Casting Lane: An Odyssey with a Happy Ending

Mrs. Barbara Muench
Architect

Architect Barbara Muench has renovated, modernised and partly rebuilt a traditional courtyard house near the Drum Tower, in the old centre of Beijing. Mrs. Muench will take us through the challenges and frustrations of home renovation in Beijing – “A Year in Provence” transposed to China. She will describe the problems she encountered from the acquisition of the house until the end of the construction period: conservation issues, legal and technical questions, building standards and building quality, coping with the Beijing bureaucracy, and the search for traditional building...
Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 19:30

Dragon Robes, Unraveling the Mythology

Paul Marcus
Institutional Investment Manager and Collector

Mr. Marcus has researched and collected Chinese Dragon Robes since 1978 and is an expert on the subject, as well as, having the world's largest private collection of 185 robes carefully preserved in conservation facilities in the USA and internationally. Mr. Marcus has conducted primary source research at the Beijing First Archives in the Forbidden City and was admitted as a Chinese Scholar to the Bibiliotheque Nationale de France in Paris. He has also studied brocade weaving at the Nanjing Brocade Research Institute and embroidery at the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute....
Thursday, September 27, 2007 - 19:30

From Red Guards to Reeboks: Chinese Youth Culture in Transition

Professor Paul Clark
Professor of Chinese
The University of Auckland, New Zealand

Is Chinese youth culture likely to assume the global importance in this century as American popular culture achieved in the last? Paul Clark will trace the emergence and elaboration of Chinese youth culture over the past forty years by focusing on three key moments. During the Cultural Revolution, an unexpected space opened up for young people. Many former Red Guards and others were "sent down" to the countryside. Without close adult supervision and with slow times in the agricultural cycle, new and often unofficial cultural activities emerged. By 1988, youth culture creatively combined...
Thursday, September 20, 2007 - 19:30

Faking It: A Brief History of Chinese Porcelain and its Value

Ms. Rose Kerr
Historian and Curator

Both the serious collector and casual shopper are aware of the challenges of trying to ensure that the ceramic object being purchased is what it is purported to be. "Faking it" indeed has a long history in China, and BIS is delighted to present Rose Kerr whose talk will consider the value of antique objects in Chinese society, and the many ways in which new ceramics were made to simulate ancient pieces. Rose will also address the status of ceramics, for prior to the Late Qing Dynasty, porcelain came low down on a hierarchy of treasured possessions, and was sometimes seen as a cheap...
Thursday, September 6, 2007 - 19:30

Earth's Hope: Envisioning a Future without Poverty and a World with Intact Eco-Systems

Mr. John D. Liu
Director, Environmental Education Media Project for China

BIS is delighted to welcome back John Liu, who in 2004, presented two of his short documentaries on ecosystems of the Mongolian steppes. In 1995, John Liu was asked by the World Bank to begin documenting a project to rehabilitate the Loess Plateau, the cradle of Chinese civilization in Northwest China. Since then, he has witnessed and filmed an amazing transformation that is reversing 400 generations of negative ecological behavior that had led to ecosystem collapse over a broad area. Through careful research into ecosystem functions such as biodiversity, soil stability, natural...
Thursday, June 7, 2007 - 19:30

Financial System Reform in China

Dr. Urs Buchmann
Head, Corporate Banking China, Credit Suisse

The financial sector has been central to China's economic development. Dr. Buchmann's presentation will provide an overview of China's financial system from the early foundations in the planned economy of the 1950s, through the reforms that have been enacted since the open door policies were launched in 1978. China's financial industry players have had to implement challenging series of regulatory, management, and financial measures in order to migrate from their former role in financing state-sponsored infrastructure and heavy industry projects, to their increasingly important function as...
Thursday, May 31, 2007 - 19:30

Blood of Yingzhou District, An Evening with Director Ruby Yang

Ruby Yang
Academy Award Winner: Documentary Short Subject, Film Director

Ruby Yang, a talented Chinese American filmmaker, directed “Blood of Yingzhou District” for which she won an Oscar in the 2007 Academy Awards in the category of Documentary Short Subject. The subject is HIV-AIDS in China, specifically in Anhui province. The victims are from poor families where the adults donate blood in evidently unsanitary conditions. One individual connected to the blood drawing procedure, describes the unsanitary conditions as combining the donated blood of fifty individuals and re-injecting a little bit of the mixture into the veins of the donors. The...
Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 19:30

Man Made Marvels: The World's Highest Railway

Michael Stedman
Film maker

Michael Stedman, Managing Director of Natural History New Zealand (NHNZ), will show his company's documentary on the making of the Qinghai-Tibet railway. The 1142 kilometer Qinghai-Tibet railway runs five kilometers above sea level passing through some of the world's most remote and spectacular terrain. The temperature sinks to minus 40 degrees; the permafrost, which is up to half a kilometer deep, is rock hard in the winter and melting in the summer. The challenge was for the railway's engineers to find ways to keep the air and ground temperatures around the track at the same level...
Thursday, May 10, 2007 - 19:30

Vivid Memories of the Cultural Revolution

Moying Li
V.P. Marcus Capital Management; Author

Award-winning author, Moying Li, will discuss her up-coming memoir entitled, Snow Falling in Spring, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the spring of 2008. Elegantly and reflectively written, the book acquaints us with the coming-of-age story of an impressionable girl during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. During that period, Moying was primarily self-taught, following the guided lessons and reading lists her father, who had been a prominent screenwriter, was able to send to her from a "hard labor farm." Moying entered Beijing Foreign Studies University in...
Thursday, April 26, 2007 - 19:30

Prospects for Peace and Sustainability in North East Asia

Dr. Maurice Strong
Former Under Secretary General under UN Secretary General Kofi Annan;
Entrepreneur

Recent progress in the Six-party Talks hosted by China has raised new hope that we may be nearing the end of the long road to peace on the Korean Peninsula which is the essential key to security and sustainability in North East Asia. Peaceful resolution of the Korean conflict must be seen in the larger context of the prospect of peace and security in the region, which remains as one of the most vulnerable to conflicts arising from competing national interests. This will require concessions and a great deal of time and effort both by the DPRK and the other parties to the negotiations....
Thursday, April 12, 2007 - 19:30

China's Environmental Challenges and Options

Mr. Ma Jun
Director of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs

China's environmental woes are clearly visible to all of us who live here and they also increasingly occupy the attention of China's leadership, as demonstrated by the hot debates on environmental issues during the recent session of the National People's Congress. Ma Jun will offer an analysis of China's current environmental challenges, particularly in light of stated plans to quadruple the economy in the 20 years between 2000 and 2020. China's per capita availability of resources is a fraction of the world average and the current model of economic development focusing on growth,...
Thursday, April 5, 2007 - 19:30

A Magic World of Officials, Lions and Flood-defying Oxen: Why did the Chinese make Statues?

Mrs. Ann Paludan
Research scholar and author

BIS is privileged to offer a talk by Ann Paludan, an old friend of BIS. Her first book on the Ming Tombs was published over twenty-five years ago and has served as a guide to many of us on our visits there. In her presentation, Ann will draw on over thirty years of research to analyze how Chinese rulers during different dynasties used sculpture to support their political and spiritual aspirations. Her lecture will include many slides of sculptural complexes, such as the famous Tang Dynasty iron oxen quelling the Yellow River, which have never been published before. As with so many...
Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 19:30

The Question of Doing Good: HIV/AIDS Programs in China

Ms. E. Sabina Brady
Consultant

China has officially declared a national priority to eradicate HIV/AIDS before it becomes a high prevalence epidemic. As China Country Director for the William J. Clinton Foundation (September 2005 - November 2006), Sabina Brady was at the frontlines of these efforts. Her presentation will provide an overview of HIV/AIDS in China, and discuss the various programs and initiatives underway focused on treatment and prevention. The Chinese Government's policy to create a harmonious and equitable society has resulted in an increased public awareness of and interest in the country's...
Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 19:30

CHINDIA: Where do the two cultures meet?

Mrs. H. Ronken Lynton
Author

H. Ronken Lynton has spent a total of more than twenty years in India, mostly as an author and a case writer and teacher in the area of organizational behaviour. When she and her husband first went to India fifty-two years ago, they steeped themselves in Indian culture as a way of understanding the people with whom they worked. She finds that Indian culture has much in common with the Chinese, historically and now also in their new trajectories. Though those earlier times are scarcely recognizable to the younger generation of either country today, the background values still undergird the...
Thursday, March 8, 2007 - 19:30

Insights into Chinese Opera

Professor Yu Qilong, Teacher, Actor & Calligrapher

Professor Yu Qilong was the first person to give a presentation to BIS 27 years ago at the Dutch Embassy! We are delighted that he will come again to inform and entertain us with his enthusiastic demonstrations and explanations of Peking Opera. Professor Yu and his niece, Charlotte, are well-known in the community and appreciated for their depth of knowledge about Chinese traditional arts and their ability to illuminate these esoteric arts in both English and French. Professor Yu, teacher at the Beijing Language and Culture Center for Foreign Diplomatic Missions, was born in January...
Thursday, February 8, 2007 - 19:30

Dateline Beijing: Reporting on China from Mao to the YouTube Age

Jaime FlorCruz

As China changes rapidly and Beijing prepares to host the Olympics 2008, diverse forces are helping to clear the way for a freer press. What was it like to cover China at the end of Chairman Mao's era? How has China reporting evolved? How is the media changing China? Jaime FlorCruz, CNN Beijing Bureau Chief, looks back at his 25 years’ experience on the frontline and talks about the rewards and challenges of getting the story in China.
Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 19:30

The Legations at Peking

Michael Moser, Anthropologist

On 25 January 2007, Michael Moser will present his long-awaited lecture on the history of the Peking Legation Quarter. The lecture will be accompanied by a slide show of rare period photographs drawn from his new book, "Foreigners Within the Gates: The Legations at Peking". Only a stone's throw away from the Imperial Palace, the Legation Quarter of Peking stood for more than half a century as 'a city apart'. Surrounded by thick walls with entry to the Chinese forbidden, the Quarter housed several thousand foreigners who lived in a miniature Europe in the heart of the Chinese capital...
Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 19:30

Cleansing the Heart: Republican Era Tea Ceramics

Alfreda Murck, Forbidden City Consultant and Researcher

With the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Jingdezhen lost its largest patron. Emulating ceramics that had been made for the imperial court, production for the commercial market included teapots that were decorated with paintings and poetic inscriptions. The white porcelain surface was treated like the paper or silk of a painting. The designs exhibit a wide range of symbols, many of which reflect contemporary issues and values, including anti-Manchu sentiment and restoration of the Ming dynasty, founding of the Republic, and even restoration of the Manchu Qing. Other pots are...