Field Trips

From March 26 to April 8 2017 the Chinese studies department of the FAU undertook another field trip to China. Ten students of various semesters participated in this trip, which included visiting Qingdao, Beijing, and Chengde. The theme of the field trip and concomitant seminar was “Cultural Exchange and Knowledge Transfer under the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911),” on which every participant held a presentation at the BFSU (Beijing). It was the goal of this trip to visit locations where encounters between the Qing and other cultures become especially visible. Qingdao was of especial interest because of its historical entanglement in German colonial history, which made it especially 

suitable for examining cultural as well as knowledge exchange at the turn of the century on site. In addition to visits to various former German colonial sites in Qingdao on which participants were accompanied by Chinese students there was also a language exchange program with the department of German studies at

the Ocean University of China, where participants met withlocal students of German. This close cooperation was continued with the Chinese partners at the BFSU (Beijing), where Prof. Li Xuetao greeted participants and gave them the opportunity to give presentations in an international setting and to discuss them with PhD students from the Institute for Global History (https://globalhistory.bfsu.edu.cn/index.htm?opType=view&ID=179). Finally,

students gained yet another perspective on China in Chengde, whose temples make apparent Imperial China’s points of contact with Central Asia rather than Europe. Apart from this academically stimulating exchange participants also gained first-hand experiences of the

peculiarities of everyday life in China on many excursions to book stores, holiday festivities, temples, palaces, and restaurants. The field trip yet again received grants from the Confucius Institute Erlangen-Nuremberg (www.kongzi.de), the Bayerische Hochschulzentrum für China (www.baychina.org) and the FAU’s Humanities Faculty deanery.

In the context of the seminar on “Ukraine in the 20^th and early 21^st Centuries – a Soviet Nation?” the chair for Eastern European history made a field trip to Ukraine in May 2015.

From March 19 to 27 2015 the department of Chinese studies undertook its third field trip to China. Whereas the first and second trips had been to Beijing and Qufu the destination of this third excursion was Xi’an in Central China, which was visited by ten students of different semesters under the guidance of Professor Marc A. Matten and Renée Gringmuth.

The field trip’s theme was “Memorial Culture and Architecture in China.” Students were tasked with examining the role for identity construction of ancient as well as new monuments ranging from the Terracotta Army to the Shaanxi History Museum and delineating how they may be said to convey tensions between politics, history, and culture. Inquiring into the monuments’ authenticity, political constructedness, and locus within contemporary cultural memory in the post-Mao era was of especial importance.

In preparation for the field trip participants attended a tutorial course that prepared them for the stay abroad and the academic discussion of the topic. In Xi’an museums and archaeological sites were visited, for example an imperial grave site from the Western Han dynasty (202-16 BC), a palace ruin from the Tang Dynasty, the famous Terracotta Army, and a memorial site dedicated to the People’s Liberation Army.

In addition to the research-oriented program an exchange with students from the College of International Cultural Exchange at North-West University, which had invited us to Xi’an in the first place, took place on two afternoons.
Here the focus was on language and cultural exchange between participants and Chinese students.

The field trip offered first-year students a first glimpse of the country and its culture as preparation and incentive for the two-semester stay abroad scheduled for the following academic year, and advanced students a chance to discover new aspects of the country and to use and improve their language skills.

The field trip again received funding from the Confucius Institute Erlangen-Nuremberg, the Bayerische Hochschulzentrum für China and the FAU’s Humanities Faculty deanery.

A report on the excursion can also be found at the Hanban webpage.