When I first visited Shanghai as a college student in 1988, I stayed at the Pujiang Hotel (浦江饭店) located just north of the Bund. Back then it was serving as a youth hostel. I remember sleeping in a large room with rows of beds filled with travelers from all over the world. Little did I know that I would be spending much of my adult life in this city researching its history. Perhaps my stay there kindled my desire to learn more about the social life that once romped in the hotel back in the 1920s. Perhaps the ghosts of famous residents from decades past whispered in my ear, begging me to preserve the memory of those glorious, decadent, daring, and dangerous times.

A review of a night at the new Jazz at Lincoln Center club near the Shanghai Bund

While in Hong Kong yesterday, I had the golden opportunity to see Blade Runner 2049 directed by Denis Villeneuve, the long-awaited sequel to the original masterpiece directed by Ridley Scott, which came out in theaters back in 1982. The IFC Mall in central Hong Kong was the perfect place to see the sequel. In resonance with some major themes in the movie which I will discuss in this entry, one can look out from the rooftop garden of the mall upon a postcolonial futuristic Asian metropolis full of neon and desire, a tourist’s fantasy dreamworld that in reality is undergoing a major identity crisis as the local population transitions from one colonial master to another. 

The title of this entry is more than just my own poor attempt at a pun—it is meant to emphasize how the EARCOS conference grounds us in the practices, principles, and realities of governing over the complex entities of international schools, especially within the context of the world region that this conference seeks to represent.

 If I were asked to write down a list of the top ten reasons why I find cities so fascinating and such wonderful places to live, it would not be easy. Well, here I go anyway, and I'm sure at least some of these will be obvious to anybody who has lived in cities:

I have a very special relationship with China’s capital city. I have lived there only twice for 6- month stints, once in 1996-7 and again in 2007. Yet I have a deep fondness for the city, and some of my oldest and dearest friends in China have lived or still live there. These days I manage to pay a visit to the city at least two or three times a year, for different purposes. Lately I’ve been going there to recruit university students for our DKU GLS program, which is what I was doing this past week. I visited the campus of Peking Foreign Languages University or Beiwai 北外 on Wednesday. On Thursday I gave a talk at Peking Normal University or Beishida 北师大. Today I headed out to Tianjin to talk to students at Nankai 南开 University (as I write this I’m on a high-speed train or gaotie back to Shanghai). In between these visits, I also managed to pay a visit to the Schwarzman Scholars campus at Tsinghua University, and also caught up with a few old friends. 

My first study abroad experience at Dartmouth College was in Taipei, back in the summer of 1988. I remember the excitement of flying over there from Boston via Tokyo, and embarking on what would turn out to be a nine-month-long life-changing journey. It is therefore fitting that my last recruiting trip of this year was to Taiwan. 

A life-changing week in the other heart of Asian civilization

A brief and intense sun-filled tour of the temples, shrines, river, canals, malls, jazz bars, and historic sites of Bangkok

A tour of Hanoi with its lakes, temples, museums, and shops in labyrinthine streets of the Old Town reveals a Chinese- and French-inflected though distinctively Vietnamese heritage

There are a growing number of British universities building campuses in Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Americans, the leading proponents of liberal arts education in the world, are less active in this region, though now Yale, Duke, NYU, and a few other intrepid explorers are leading the way. For the rest of you out there, I have a simple message: The time to invest in liberal arts education in Asia is now!

In my previous post, I recapped a five-week tour of Asia that was the first part of my two-part recruiting mission for DKU and the launch of our new undergrad degree program in fall 2018. This time I’ve decided to break up my current Asia tour into separate posts by country, starting with Singapore.

Last month I had the unusual opportunity to visit five different countries/regions in Asia, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong/Macau, and Korea. This was the first of a two-part tour that I am conducting of schools in Asia as part of our global recruitment efforts for Duke Kunshan University’s new undergraduate degree program, which we are launching in fall 2018. 

Everyone who studies Chinese as a foreign language—or any foreign language for that matter—intensively and long enough will be familiar with this phenomenon. Peter Hessler writes about it in his own books about his experiences in China. The idea is that when you learn another language and culture deeply enough, you take on an alternate identity when speaking that language and engaging with that culture.

I have been giving many talks lately on the value of liberal arts education to audiences in China and elsewhere in Asia. While most institutions of higher learning in this part of the world offer the general education approach, whereby students are channeled into specific areas of study with few if any choices outside their majors, liberal arts education is definitely making headway in China and other Asian countries. There are quite a few liberal arts style programs now in cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul, and increasingly in Beijing and Shanghai, and while small and spare compared with the larger universities, these programs are an emerging sign that the liberal arts model is recognized and valued here.

Last night, publisher Graham Earnshaw and I had the pleasure to launch the republished memoir of 1920s Shanghai jazz musician, Whitey Smith. Whitey’s book I Didn’t Make a Million, first published in Manila in 1956, was just republished in its original form by Earnshaw Books. In the latest edition, I provide a brief introduction to the man and his times. During my talk, I played two songs recorded by Whitey Smith’s orchestra in 1928 that probably haven’t been heard in Shanghai since the 1930s.