This talk narrates four little-known stories of Arab-Chinese entanglement in the age of trans-imperial collaboration and competition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although much attention is paid to China's relationships with the Middle East today, I argue that this relationship did not emerge out of nowhere. Chinese and Arab lands were not entirely separate worlds until recently. Rather they have been entangled in complex ways well before the turn of the twenty-first century. The discovery of these episodes of largely invisible interactions resulted from my original juxtaposition of primary sources in Arabic and Chinese from multi-sited research in China, Egypt, Syria, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

This lecture is part of the lecture series Conceptions of World Order and Their Social Carrier Groups.

The Speaker

Shuang Wen is a historian of modern China and the Arab world. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, Professor Wen held fellowships at the National University of Singapore and New York University Abu Dhabi. As a native Mandarin speaker, she received intensive Arabic-language trainings. Before switching her career to academia, Shuang was a broadcast journalist for Phoenix Satellite Television InfoNews Channel in Hong Kong, covering major breaking news events from the Middle East, and English-Mandarin-Cantonese simultaneous interpreter for live news coverage. Her latest publication is “A Short History of Modern Arab Knowledge Production on China,” in Islam, Revival, and Reform: Redefining Tradition for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Natana J. DeLong-Bas, University of Syracuse Press, 2022, chapter 9.

Access

This event will take place in a hybrid format. 

On Campus: Zentrales Hörsaalgebäude 104

On Zoom: The digital participation at this event is open to everyone who registers prior to the event: Registration