Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

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Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan LRCCS at the University of Michigan was founded in 1961 and has been a national leader in Chinese st

LRCCS at the University of Michigan was founded in 1961 and has been a national leader in Chinese studies for over 50 years.

From Frightful to Delightful: East Asian Monsters in the StacksDemons, shape-shifters and mythical beasts are lurking in...
10/15/2026

From Frightful to Delightful: East Asian Monsters in the Stacks

Demons, shape-shifters and mythical beasts are lurking in the U-M Asia Library this Halloween. Join the library's Third Thursdays open house for an exhibit of monstrous creatures from across East Asia and the stories behind them.

🕘 Today, Thu, Oct 15, 4–6 PM
📍 Asia Library Quiet Study Room, 4th floor Hatcher North
🍪 Light refreshments will be provided

Find out how these whimsical and eerie beings have frightened, amused and fascinated audiences across cultures and generations, and what they reveal about the societies that created and reimagined them. Expect a playful tour through East Asian folklore, literature, art and popular culture.

🎃 Costumes and curiosity are welcome!

🎁 While you're there, pick up a Third Thursdays passport and collect a stamp at each of this month's locations (Asia Library, Clark Library, International Studies and the Special Collections Research Center) to win a prize.

🖼 Image: The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Tachibana Gadō 橘雅堂, 1892, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Take your Chinese from Ann Arbor to Beijing!Global Course Connections(GCCs) let you take what you learn on campus during...
10/14/2026

Take your Chinese from Ann Arbor to Beijing!

Global Course Connections(GCCs) let you take what you learn on campus during the winter semester and apply it abroad. Each one is a hands-on class taught by a U-M professor during a 3-week field experience the following summer.

Join Center for Global and Intercultural Study (CGIS) Advisor Ben Peipert and Professor Qian Liu to learn more about the GCC in Beijing, China - 2nd Year Chinese program, the application process, and the courses. Professor Liu leads and teaches the program.

💻 Online Info Sessions
🕘 Fri, Oct 16, 12-1 PM
🕒 Fri, Nov 6, 3-4 PM

💬 Online Drop-In Advising
🕞 Tue, Nov 17, 3:30-4:30 PM
🕐 Thu, Dec 3, 1-2 PM

📅 Application deadline: Dec 10, 2026

🔗 https://myumi.ch/bDX59

A Chinese translation of the editors' introduction to The Great Separation is now available from THiS (Theory, History, ...
10/13/2026

A Chinese translation of the editors' introduction to The Great Separation is now available from THiS (Theory, History, Society)

Written by Roi Livne, Robert S. Jansen, and Yang Zhang, the introduction traces Xiaohong's life and scholarship and how The Great Separation came to be. It was translated by Jianqiang Wang of Peking University, with permission from the University of Michigan Press.
📖 https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wV8vhF-kWWfVz9iKWZ7JpA

Xiaohong Xu (1978–2023), a beloved sociologist at the University of Michigan, passed away at just 45, leaving behind an extraordinary intellectual legacy and dreams yet to be fulfilled. His posthumous book offers a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the political and economic transformations of modern China, a testament to his intellectual ambition and originality.

To honor his life and legacy, U-M is establishing the Xiaohong Xu Memorial Fund to support doctoral students, particularly international students and those studying Chinese society. Having once journeyed from rural China to pursue his own scholarly dreams, Xiaohong will now help the next generation of scholars pursue theirs.

💛 All donations are currently matched 1:1. Please consider making a gift to carry his legacy forward: https://myumi.ch/qwQwe

Poster designed by Chudie Gu

Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Place-Making in Postindustrial Taiwan🎙 Anru Lee, The City University of New Yor...
10/12/2026

Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Place-Making in Postindustrial Taiwan

🎙 Anru Lee, The City University of New York
🕘 Tue, Oct 13, 12-1 PM
📍 10th Floor Weiser Hall | In-person & Zoom
🔗 Register: https://myumi.ch/VDGR3

This talk interrogates the nature of shared expressions of history, sentiments, and memory as it investigates the role of women workers in the shifting public narrative surrounding the Memorial Park for Women Laborers in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. As a heritage site, the Memorial Park for Women Laborers elucidates how “history” and “memory” are not simply about the past but part of a forward-looking process that emerges from the social, political, and economic needs of the present, legitimized and validated through its associations with the past.

A cultural anthropologist, Anru Lee's research focuses on the Asian Pacific region and issues of capitalism, modernity, gender and sexuality, and urban anthropology. She is the author of In the Name of Harmony and Prosperity: Labor and Gender Politics in Taiwan's Economic Restructuring and Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan and is co-editor of Women in the New Taiwan: Gender Roles and Gender Consciousness in a Changing Society, Why Taiwan? Anthropological Perspectives, and Brill Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies (The Gender and Women's Studies Section). She is currently working on a book manuscript that investigates mass rapid transit systems as related to issues of technology, governance, and citizenship. She is professor of anthropology at the City University of New York.

“Xiaohong wrote as if every word he typed had the potential to change the world, maybe not in a practical way, but in an...
10/12/2026

“Xiaohong wrote as if every word he typed had the potential to change the world, maybe not in a practical way, but in an existential way for sure. He believed his words and his ideas could reveal inner truths about the world, which had value even if few read and fewer understood them. This is why he was so serious about sociology. This is what drove him until his very last moments.”

Ahead of Wednesday’s book launch, we spoke with Roi Livne, coeditor of The Great Separation (University of Michigan Press), the posthumous book by sociologist Xiaohong Xu. Dr. Livne discussed the editing process, how Xu’s concept of ordoeconomism challenges the conventional wisdom of neoliberalism, and what the book contributes to economic sociology and the sociology of knowledge. He also shared memories of Xiaohong and the close friendship they built.

🔗 Read the full Q&A: https://myumi.ch/8JkVR

📚 Book Launch: The Great Separation by Xiaohong Xu
🕘 Wed, Oct 14, 12-2 PM ET
📍 Michigan Union, Kuenzel Room (first floor) | In-person & Zoom
🔗 RSVP: https://myumi.ch/xjEjN
Zoom registration is still open. RSVP is required, and virtual attendees will receive the Zoom link by email.

💙 Honor Xiaohong’s legacy
“The best way to honor Xiaohong was creating a path for people who have a similar life trajectory: international students doing work on China or similar topics.”

“I think that this fellowship and the book are very beautiful ways to keep Xiaohong alive among us. The book already exists. Now I hope people will help us bring the fellowship into existence.”

Gifts to the Xiaohong Xu Memorial Support Fund will be used by the Department of Sociology to support doctoral students, with a preference for international students and/or students studying Chinese society.
🔗 Give: https://myumi.ch/qwQwe

Pop-up Moon Festival Dragon Dance at the Maya Lin Wave Field, one of the most celebrated public art sites on campus! 🐉La...
10/05/2026

Pop-up Moon Festival Dragon Dance at the Maya Lin Wave Field, one of the most celebrated public art sites on campus! 🐉

Last weekend, virtuoso erhuist Xiao D**g Wei serenaded the U-M Fortune and Longevity Dragon as it traversed the crests and troughs of The Wave Field, designed 31 years ago by renowned architectural and landscape artist Maya Lin. A striking visual poetry is shared with the Asian dragon, whose serpentine body mimics the undulating rhythm of the Field. One look at the dragon promises infinite good fortune and harmony to all!

🔗 Learn more about the Wave Field:
https://campusinfo.umich.edu/article/wave-field-north

Missed the dance? The dragon is coming indoors this November.

Dancing with the Dragon exhibit
🕘 Nov 4-Dec 11
📍 Room 547, Weiser Hall
🔗 https://myumi.ch/X87Ep

A curated experience of the imaginary, featuring a lightly sci-fi, magnificent work of art: the LRCCS Fortune and Longevity Dragon, a 25-ft long, Asian-inspired full-body dragon. The exhibition highlights the story of the dragon's fabrication and its impact on community.

With a keen attention to how culture and elite conflict shape politics, The Great Separation upends deterministic unders...
10/03/2026

With a keen attention to how culture and elite conflict shape politics, The Great Separation upends deterministic understandings of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the market reforms that followed. This ambitious posthumous volume by sociologist Xiaohong Xu turns the existing scholarship on China’s “neoliberalism” on its head by demonstrating that the effort to separate mass politics from economic policy had its origins well before the Reform and Opening-up era.

In this edited Q&A transcript, Dr. Zhang discussed Xu's concept of ordoeconomism and how it differs from neoliberalism, what the Cultural Revolution explains about China's reform-era development model, and what kind of scholar Xu was.

Yang Zhang is a coeditor of The Great Separation and an associate professor in the Department of Global Inquiry at American University. His research covers the areas of comparative historical sociology, contentious politics, political economy, social networks, sociology of knowledge, and social theory.

🔗 Read the Q&A: myumi.ch/PbQjP

Bad Romance in Southeast Asia: China-linked Cyber-Scamming, Variegated Govotolerance, and the Geopolitics of Criminality...
10/02/2026

Bad Romance in Southeast Asia: China-linked Cyber-Scamming, Variegated Govotolerance, and the Geopolitics of Criminality along China’s Belt and Road Initiative
🎙 Tom Narins, University at Albany
🕘 Tue, Oct 6, 12-1 PM
📍 Room 555 Weiser Hall | In-person & Zoom
🔗 Register: https://myumi.ch/7JPzN

The rise of Chinese-linked criminal actors in Southeast Asia – including cyber scammers running fake online romance schemes for financial extortion – has disrupted traditional narratives of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure investment strategy. Counter to the "romantic" Silk Road imagery the BRI commonly draws on, these activities are forcing a reconfiguration of political and economic realities across the region, shifting attention toward changing practices of digital economy and governance along the BRI. This paper introduces the concept of 'variegated govotolerance' to explain why governments and citizens have (to varying degrees) come to tolerate regional cybercriminal activity linked to Chinese actors.

Tom Narins is an associate professor of Geography, Planning, and Sustainability at the University at Albany with research interests in the critical geopolitics of China's growing engagement with the global economy. His current research examines the political and economic tensions associated with “Global China” in terms of both traditional and digital infrastructure, with a special focus on China’s digital expansion across the Global South. As a political and economic geographer, Tom has published on sovereignty issues relating to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as well as on official Chinese lending to BRI-participant countries after the coronavirus pandemic. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as: Geopolitics; Human Geography; Territory, Politics, Governance; The Professional Geographer; Asian Perspective; Area; and The Extractive Industries and Society.

🎙️ Alumni Story | Ryan Etzcorn: Bridge-building between superpowersRyan Etzcorn (Chinese Studies and Public Policy ’16) ...
09/28/2026

🎙️ Alumni Story | Ryan Etzcorn: Bridge-building between superpowers

Ryan Etzcorn (Chinese Studies and Public Policy ’16) brought his masters’ degrees to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, a Fulbright research fellowship on Chinese NGOs, and the Ford Foundation. Now a senior director at Ankura China Advisors, he works with global businesses and NGOs and sees every day why understanding China matters.

In this edited Q&A transcript, we discussed his studies and research in China's non-profit sector, and how the Michigan training led him to a China-focused career.

🔗 Full Story: https://myumi.ch/qwqAQ

Sea as Medium in Early Modern Chinese Fiction🎙 SE Kile, University of Michigan🕘 Tue, Sept 29, 12-1 PM📍 Room 355, Weiser ...
09/25/2026

Sea as Medium in Early Modern Chinese Fiction

🎙 SE Kile, University of Michigan
🕘 Tue, Sept 29, 12-1 PM
📍 Room 355, Weiser Hall | In-person

In this talk, Dr. Kile demonstrates how we might better understand Chinese early modernity through environment and experience, categories that also open up possibilities of geographical comparison. He analyzes how the sea novels Sanbao taijian xiyang ji (Record of the Sanbao Eu**ch in the Western Seas, pub. 1597), Haiyou ji 海遊記 (Record of a Sea Journey, pub. ca. early nineteenth century), and Xiyi meng 希夷夢 Haiguo chunqiu 海國春秋 (A Dream of the Master of Infinitesimal Subtlety, or A Chronicle of the Sea Kingdom) describe travel by sea – for example, into a luoji 落漈 (whirlpool), or across a ruanshui yang 軟水洋 ("soft water" sea) – and how this fictional practice details and elaborates the perceived and imagined qualities of water. Lu Xun famously described Ming and Qing novels that abounded with super-mobile human characters as "supernatural" fiction (shenmo xiaoshuo 神魔小說). Dr. Kile departs from this foundational paradigm to look more precisely: what terms do these novels use for moving through air, and how did that relate to water travel? The depths of the seas and the heights of the skies did not function as media for actually existing humans in the early modern period, but in the fiction of the time, humans could travel through the sea, both across its surfaces and through its depths, as well as through the sky in all its vastness.

SE Kile is a scholar of early modern Chinese literature and cultural history, focusing on the intersections of multimedia practice across a broad range of cultural objects, from poetry to props, from novels to gardens. An associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Kile's first book, Towers in the Void: Li Yu and Early Modern Chinese Media (Columbia, 2023), theorizes early modern mediation and entrepreneurship through Li Yu's cultural production across the areas of playwriting, fiction writing, garden and architectural design, theater direction, and body modification. His current book project argues for the relevance of the "early modern" to the study of China, exploring how novelists synthesized scientific, religious, and vernacular knowledge about the world.

Address

Weiser Hall 500 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI
48109

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

(734) 764-6308

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