China Syndrome: NYC Events Celebrating the Chinese
By Troy Segal
Who doesn’t want to learn more about China, the largest Asian nation? Whether your interests lie towards the cultural, the historical, or the political, there’s a lecture, performance, or activity for you coming this June in New York City.
Main page image: Capital M, rooftop looking northwest at dusk. (Photograph: Lois Conner, 2010)
Past Views: In their new book Yellow Peril!, scholars Jack Tchen and Dylan Yeats survey a collection of anti-Asian images and writings, intended to create paranoia among Westerners, at the Tenement Museum on June 4. Throughout the 19th century, European artists sought to portray exotic figures from other lands in a fanciful type known as the “Oriental African.” Art historian Adrienne Childs of Harvard gives an art talk at the Dahesh Museum of Art Gift Shop on June 5. Photographer Lois Conner presents a panorama of Beijing, chronicling its changes via three decades of pictures, at the 92nd Street Y on June 18.
Political Affairs: The China Institute hosts a buffet lunch while speaker Stephen Roach of Yale University offers food for thought on the economic tensions between China and the U.S. on June 10; and the following week, Harvard Business School professor and author F. Warren McFarlan asks, Can China Lead? on June 17. What sort of energy crisis is looming as the Chinese economy grows at a breakneck pace? Find out in a panel discussion at the Asia Society and Museum on June 11.
Fun Festivities: Learn to dance on water, make good luck charms, and sail away with the Museum of Chinese in America’s Dragon Boat Family Festival, featuring traditional foods, stories and crafts on June 7.
Making Music: At the Asia Society and Museum, the halls are alive with two concerts: a trio of Chinese-born opera singers performing Western classical music on June 19; and the exotically garbed Dimen Dong Folk Chorus of Guizhou Province (pictured above), preceded by a discussion of their centuries-old songs and musical tradition on June 21.