Daniel W. Y. Kwok

12 February 2015

Chinese New Year Food: Sights, Sounds, and Symbols

The relationship between thought and food is a hallmark of the China Seminar. This relationship at Chinese New Year impinges on one’s senses with particular relevancy. Professor Kwok, for this session of the China Seminar, offers an encounter of the foods and occasions of this temperate zone civilization at this time of year. In lieu of a biographical sketch, Daniel Kwok, founding convener of the China Seminar already known to seminarians, has this to say in the “Foreword” that he wrote in a cookbook by his mother (he edited in 2013 just before his stroke in October that year).

13 September 2012

Translators midst Magpies and Nightingales: The Story of Xianyi and Gladys Yang

Master translators of Chinese and Western classics as well as modern literature, Yang Xianyi 杨宪益 and Gladys (Margaret Tayler) Yang 戴乃迭 lived an extraordinary life through China’s revolutionary decades. The couple’s playful idealism, devotion to one another, love for China, and personal trials throughout decades of bureaucratic regimentation and Maoist revolution which boasted more magpies (scribes of going coin) than nightingales (authentic voices of the self) help pose the question whether they themselves were either or both.

12 January 2012

China Seminar Going on 40: Food for Thought

The China Seminar celebrates its 35th anniversary, a significant milestone by any stretch of imagination for a grassroots program! And what’s more fitting than inviting Seminar’s founder, Prof. Daniel Kwok, to speak commemoratively about the Seminar’s history, from the “birther” questions of its beginnings, through the personages and events of the intervening years, and on “why food for thought.” As he understands it, new members of the China Seminar might find this story interesting and many long-standing members might find the “remembrance of things” edifying of the many luncheon hours they spent both as speakers and participants.

8 September 2011

China: Confucian? Communist? Capitalist?

2011 marks the centennial of the Chinese Republican Revolution inspired by Sun Yatsen. It also marks the 90th year of the Chinese Communist Party. These two events stencil China’s entry into the modern age of the Twentieth Century, leaving behind the two-thousand-year-old Confucian state/society. Yet, all three adjectives in the title of today’s talk have been applied as nomenclature for China’s modern transformation, sometimes concurrently so as pundits and scholars strive for interpretive meaning of this passage.

9 September 2010

Courtesan, Poet, Historian: Continuing the Nightingales-Magpies Theme

“Rather a famed courtesan true than a famed scholar false,” said the eighteenth-century literatusYuan Mei of the first two figures of today’s talk who livened Late-Ming (16th-17th century) romance and politics. Three hundred years later, historian true Chen Yinque devoted three volumes of biography to the famed courtesan, while blind during the ten years of its writing and completing it in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. Strange? How so?

10 September 2009

Tiananmen: Portal to Modern Chinese History

Tiananmen, Gate of Heavenly Peace, serves also as a portal through which major events in China’s modern passage can be viewed and interpreted. From the mid-20th century on, every ninth year of the decade since the founding of the republic on October 1 in 1949 offers a chance at a historical decalogue. Professor Kwok explores the historical meanings of Tiananmen events, keeping in mind that monuments often tell different sides of history.

8 January 2009

China’s Anti-Rightist Movement Fifty Years Later

Professor Kwok explores the historical significance of an unrequited event in China’s recent history, the Anti-Rightist Movement of the 1950s which affected an estimated 550,000 lives. As a historian, Kwok is particularly appreciative of the oft-quoted statement of the writer Zhang Kangkang: “There is no tomorrow for a people who cannot use the present to reexamine the past.” The founding convener of the China Seminar, Kwok is professor emeritus of history at the University of Hawaii, where he has taught Chinese history and world civilizations.

9 August 2007

“The Chinese Garden” in Madeira in May

The May China Seminar did not meet on account of Daniel Kwok’s giving a plenary talk on “the Chinese Garden” at the Congresso International Jardins do Mundo: Discursos e Práticas (International Congress on Gardens of the World: Discourses and Practices) held in Funchal, Madeira, May 9-12. The event was planned and organized by a combination of academic and civic bodies in Portugal and other Portuguese areas. A few other international institutions were involved also.

8 November 2006

Shuixiang: China’s Water Country

The China Seminar may remember talks on the classical Chinese garden by Daniel Kwok and others in the recent past. Today’s presentation offers a visual excursion in the water landscape which inspired the classical garden craft. The locale is the Lower Yangzi River Delta, an area interlaced with waterways and picturesque towns going back more than a thousand years. Ming China’s famed landscape architect Ji Cheng was born in Tongli, one of six such towns to be visited in this presentation.

11 November 2004

More About Nightingales and Magpies: Voices Out of China

Twice before, Professor Kwok introduced for the China Seminar the writings of a young writer by the name of Yu Jie. To Yu we owe the expression of “Nightingales and Magpies” as representing respectively the song of the free individual and the crowing of state-harnessed intellectuals. In his continuing search for nightingales, Professor Kwok will present Huang Xiang, the poet who initiated the “opening up” of China, a full generation before Yu Jie.

11 December 2003

Two Classical Chinese Gardens in America: Slides and Comments

Professor D. W. Y. Kwok, the founding convener of the China Seminar, is professor emeritus of history at the University of Hawaii, where he has taught Chinese history and world civilizations. He has concurrently served in numerous administrative posts, including chair of Asian Studies, chair of the Department of History, and director of the Center for Chinese Studies. He also directed the university’s Asia Fellowships Program for Journalists. Among his publications are: Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900-1950 (1965, 1971); Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays in Chinese Thought (with Richard J.

20 November 2003

Universal Values for a Democratic Society [in conjunction with the Nisei Veterans Endowed Forum Series]

The November China Seminar will be held in conjunction with the Nisei Veterans Endowed Forum Series under the theme of Universal Values for a Democratic Society. The accompanying invitation from the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Hawaii to China Seminar members explains the when, where and format of the event. Please respond directly to the invitation, and it will be very good to see you there on November 20.

17 January 2002

More About Nightingales and Magpies: Voices Out of China

Last year, Professor Kwok introduced for the China Seminar the writings of a young writer by the name of Yu Jie. To Yu we owe the expression of “Nightingales and Magpies” as representing respectively the song of the free individual and the crowing of state-harnessed intellectuals. The latter has been increasingly strident in US-China relations, which have seen mutually demonizing tendencies, exacerbated by events from Yugoslavia to Hainan airspace. The post-911 months provide an occasion to inquire after the status of these two species.

13 September 2001

Eighty Years of the Chinese Communist Party

President Jiang Zemin announced during the summer celebrations of the eightieth birthday of the Chinese Communist Party that party membership will be now open to capitalists. What does this unprecedented change in the party of the workers mean for China in years to come? While few can predict with certainty Chinese political directions, many can at least find some clues in the eighty years of the Chinese Communist Party as it struggled for revolutionary supremacy, attained success in 1949 and took China through the Cultural Revolution and into the present-stage of opening.

12 April 2001

Revisiting “Chinese Tradition” at the Millennial Mark

D.W.Y. Kwok is professor emeritus of history at the University of Hawaii, where he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Chinese history, Chinese intellectual history, and world civilizations. He has concurrently served in numerous administrative posts, including chair of Asian Studies, chair of the Department of History, and director of the Center for Chinese Studies. He also directs the university’s Asia Fellowships Program for Journalists. Among his publications are: Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900-1950 (1965); Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays in Chinese Thought (with Richard J.

17 February 2000

Saying “No” and Not Saying “No”: About Authors and Readers in China

The latter half of the 1990s witnessed the emergence of “say ‘no’” sentiment in China. It appeared as an anti-American assertion of the narrow, Chinese variety of nationalism. Now, China is once again in the “say ‘no’” mood. (For the third time, some would argue.) Many scholars and observers have attempted to disassociate themselves from this sentiment. Perhaps the most eloquent expression of this distancing is seen in the unusual writings of Yu Jie.

19 August 1999

The Chinese Millennium

At the last meeting of the seminar, it was announced that the first five meetings of the 25th year of the China Seminar will be spent probing the Chinese millennium with Professor Daniel Kwok doing the presentation and offering, in essence, a short course on Chinese history of the last one thousand years. A thousand years ago, China’s Song dynasty began a reordering of the various elements of the cultural process which produced one of the most dazzling and successful civilizations in world history.

15 April 1999

Chinese Commemorations: What, When and Where

Professor Daniel Kwok continues his historical review of China’s last hundred years for the China Seminar. In the early 1990s, he began with events of the 1890s and placed twentieth-century Chinese history in the light of those events which prompted reform and revolution. Professor Kwok is emeritus professor of history at the University of Hawaii, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses on Chinese history, Chinese intellectual history and World Civilizations.

14 October 1998

From Creativity to Humans and Beasts: The Tan Kah Kee lectures in Singapore

For the month of September, 1998, Professor D.W.Y. Kwok accepted an inaugural appointment to the Tan Kah Kee Chair in History at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The chair honors a legendary figure in Southeast Asian history, touching upon business, education, and philanthropy. For Professor Kwok, it was an honor to be the first occupant and an event of personal significance, as he was visiting Professor at nanyang thirty-three years ago.

14 May 1998

1898: Continuing the Story of China in the Last Hundred Years

In the summer of 1898, following China’s defeat by Japan in 1894-95, a major reform occurred under the leadership of Kang Youwei, who gained the ears of the Guangxu emperor. Known as the Hundred Days' Reform, for it lasted but the three months of summer, this reform effort holds many lesson of institutional change in China. One goes back to the 11th century to find another reform of such magnitude. Both failed at institutional change.

11 December 1997

The Great Wall, Grand Canal, Three Gorges Dam, Dujiangyan: Reflections on Mammoth Projects in Chinese History

From antiquity the Chinese state has produced prodigious feats of engineering of various types. Of the four projects mentioned in the title, perhaps only three are well known, with the Great Wall, the only one of the four not in the category of hydraulic engineering, the best known. Old and young nowadays know that it can be seen on the moon. Dujiangyan is perhaps the least known and has a significance all of its own.

17 April 1997

Macau

As the date of Hong Kong’s reversion to China draws nearer and the world’s attention becomes more intensely focused by the day, there is, for comparative and contrastive perspective, the matter of Macau to consider. Macau reverts to China in December, 1999. Although the Hong Kong reversion is watched closely in Macau and Lisbon, Macau’s own role in Chinese relations with the outside world has had a longer and not altogether similar history as that of Hong Kong.

11 September 1996

Patriotism? Nationalism? Power Struggle?: Recent Manifestations and Concerns

From the missile crisis in the Taiwan Straits to the recently concluded Olympic Games, and indeed on numerous other occasions, China appears to offer the world a new intensity in her nationalistic sentiments. The reasons are many, so are the views interpreting this new stridency. In this thirtieth year of the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, one cannot but be reminded of the same stridency in that movement and wonder about continuities and discontinuities of political style and substance in China.

16 February 1996

An Encounter with Foods of the Chinese New Year

Robert Hsu, owner-manager of Maple Garden Restaurant, has agreed to offer to the CHINA SEMINAR a luncheon of several dishes containing ingredients indispensable to traditions of the Chinese New Year. This special meal will be accompanied by some commentary by D. W. Y. Kwok on the symbolic and culinary aspects of foods of the Chinese New Year. In addition, Ms. Zhang Ling, a noted guzheng (zither) player from Beijing, has kindly consented to perform before the luncheon.

7 December 1995

The Centennial Significance of 1995 in Chinese History

In 1895 China, defeated by Japan, signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the terms of which included the cession of Taiwan to Japan and influenced profoundly the subsequent course of events in China. Professor Kwok will address the impact of the events of 1895 on modern Chinese history. D. W. Y. Kwok specializes in modern Chinese intellectual history. He is professor of history at the University of Hawaii where he has served as director of Asian Studies, chair of the Department of History, and director of the Center for Chinese Studies.

9 March 1995

An End of the Century View of China: 1895-1995

In 1895 Sun Yat-sen founded China’s first revolutionary organization, the Xingzhonghui (Revive China Society). The year 1895 saw China’s defeat by Japan. The multitudinous events during the final decade of the 19th century conditioned China’s entry into the 20th century and colored its disposition thereafter. In 1995 China finds itself not only looking toward the 21st century but also assessing the past century. Daniel Kwok, who has attended a number of recent conferences on the theme of retrospection and China’s future, will share with China Seminar members and guests some of his reflections on the topic.

9 September 1993

Unity and Division in Chinese History: Reflections of Recurrent Themes with a Report on a Recent Constitution-Drafting Conference

Please join us for a consideration of the themes of division and unity in Chinese history in as much as such themes impinge upon political. economic, and cultural alternatives for a China facing change at the threshold of a new century. In July, 1993, at the invitation of Yan Jiaqi. former President of the Federation for a Democratic China based in Paris, Professor Kwok attended the inaugural conference for the drafting of a constitution for a “federal republic of China” held in Honolulu.

11 February 1993

Nationalism and Contemporary China: A Symposium Report

Please join us for a report on a major international symposium on the theme of “Nationalism and Contemporary China" which convened on the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Scholars agree that nationalism forms the major theme of twentieth-century Chinese social, political, economic and ideological change. Yet, among Chinese scholars, it has been a subject more often felt than articulated in scholarly interpretation. For China herself, this nationalism has been revolutionary at the same time that it has been generally unsympathetic to modernization and modernism.

9 May 1991

The Chinese Palate and Its Pleasures

Founding Convener of the China Seminar, Professor Kwok is Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawai‘i. His special field is the history of Chinese thought. From time to time he offers excursions into Chinese culture and life. The “Chinese Palate” is such an excursion which he first gave before a San Francisco audience on the occasion of a Sichuan archaeological exhibition and cultural festival in the spring of 1987 and to the China Seminar on the occasion of the Lunar New Year in 1988.

11 October 1990

Three Trips: Beijing, Cuiheng, Liaoning

8 June 1989

Fourteen Years of Food for Thought

Professor Kwok, founder/convenor of the China Seminar, will have just returned from accompanying the Hawaiʻi Public Television team to Liaoning, home of the last emperor, in preparation for a documentary. He will also comment on the campaign for the Center of Chinese Studies in which the staging of Eaton Magoon’s 13 Daughters plays a major role.

9 February 1989

“Bright Moon and Clear Wind”: The Place of Ming and Qing in Chinese Thought and Culture

Founding convenor of the China Seminar, Professor Kwok is Director of the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawaii. His special field is the history of Chinese thought. Because is presentation of “Bright Moon and Clear Wind” at the Honolulu Academy of Arts on January 8, 1989 was made to a full house, with people being turned away for lack of space, Dr. Kwok will repeat the lecture for this occasion.

11 February 1988

The Chinese Palate: The Search for the Imaginative and Sensual

Founding convener of the China Seminar, Professor Kwok is both Chairman of the History Department and Director of the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawaii. His special field is the history of Chinese thought. From time to time, he offers excursions into Chinese culture and life. The “Chinese Palate” is such an excursion which he gave before a San Francisco audience on the occasion of a Sichuan archeological exhibition and cultural festival in the spring of 1987.

1 October 1987

The Qufu International Conference on Confucius

Professor Daniel Kwok, Director of the Center for Chinese Studies and Chairman of the Department of History.

6 November 1986

Dances of Apsaras, Music of the Pipa, and Slides from the Dun Huang Grotoes

5 December 1985

An Historian Views China's Open Door Policy

D. W. Y. Kwok, Professor of History and Chairman of the Council for Chinese Studies, will speak on “An Historian Views China’s Open Door Policy.”

4 April 1985

Film viewing: 'Buddhism in China,' surveying the development of Buddhism from the Han (first century) to the 20th century

1 December 1983

The '97 Question: Hong Kong Between China and Britain

D. W. Y. Kwok, Professor of History at the University of Hawaii, will speak on “The ‘97 Question: Hong Kong Between China and Britain.” Part of his sabbatical year at the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong (August 19, 1982 - Auguist 22, 1983), was spent following the unfolding of another fascinating chapter (last?) in Hong Kong’s history.

28 January 1982

Trip to China

Daniel Kwok, Professor of History and the University of Hawaii, and presently leading a group on a visit to China, will report on the trip and start the year’s proceedings.

24 April 1980

Mao and the Post-Mao Era: Some Questions of Continuity and Discontinuity

Daniel Kwok, Professor of History at the University of Hawaii, will speak on the subject of “Mao and the Post-Mao Era: Some Questions of Continuity and Discontinuity.”

26 July 1979

Ding Ling (Ting Ling) - Thoughts in June and July

D. W. Y. Kwok, Professor of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will speak on “Ding Ling (Ting Ling) - Thoughts in June and July.” The recent rehabilitation of Ding Ling as a member of the People’s Political Consultative Conference terminates 22 years of criticism and confinement for this writer. Her literary career and political encounters form important aspects of the history of literary dissent in modern China.

25 May 1978

Confucius and His Modern Fate

China Seminar organizer, Professor Daniel W. Y. Kwok will speak on “Confucius and His Modern Fate.” Professor Kwok was born in Shanghai. After coming to the United States, he received his B.A. from Brown University, his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He has taught at Yale, Knox College, Nanyang University in Singapore, University of Hong Kong, and the University of Hawaii. He has numerous publications in the field of modern Chinese intellectual history.

26 January 1978

Inaugural Luncheon

Guests of the Mr. and Mrs. Edward K. Y. Ho Memorial Fund, established to support Chinese Studies.