Michelle Obama Visited China's Mother Lode of Higher Education

BEIJING - Michelle Obama, the wife of the US president, loves to do things in a big way. What better place to talk about the future of education and academic exchange between the two superpowers during her trip to Beijing than visiting China's mother lode of Higher Education -Peking University.

READ AT STRAITS TIMES Michelle Obama champions freedom of expression at Peking University

This event will long been used by the sages of PKU to boost their prestige in the world, as Wang Enge, the current president of PKU (also known as 'Beida' in China) and other leaders have invested greatest efforts in attracting some of the most visible and renowned speakers (from world leaders to economists, professors, and celebrities) of all walks of life to hold lecturers here. The speaker's fee of Ms Obama was not disclosed (if there was any) -but it isn't uncommon that (instead of cash) valuable gifts or favors are presented. President Wang Enge allegedly offered admission of Ms Obama's two daughters to Peking University should they decide to study in China in the future.

READ AT BIG THINK Chinese top universities plagued with corruption

Peking University recently crashed down on democrats and dissident voices, fulminating into the dismissal of Xia Yeliang -an outspoken critic against corruption in China's academia.

Note: The Stanford Center is pretty posh; usually underused. It's two levels underground. You can see the daylight falling in through the ceiling. Great picture!

Image credit: FLOTUSSinChina via +Veooz 

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Pattberg: No Division of power will be granted

"The anti-corruption movement causes much more psychological stress, even anxiety or paranoia in all strata of Chinese society: Everyone knows someone who is corrupt, but few want to get involved in any of this. That’s because China is not only cracking down on corruption, it is simultaneously going after the activists, democrats, and dissidents."

--Pattberg, Thorsten (2013), Pattberg spoke with The Wall Street Journal about Xi Jinping's Anti-Corruption Campaign, The East-West Dichotomy, east-west-dichotomy.com

Thorsten Pattberg and Frank Sieren - Vertrauen Wagen (Peking University Conference)

Thorsten Pattbergwith Frank Sieren, Bestselling Author, Journalist, and Political Commentator

PEKING UNIVERSITY - I have been frequenting Beijing since 2003 –lived, studied, and created here- but never met in person who is possibly the Number One of all German “China-Experts”: Frank Sieren. Mr. Sieren is best known for his close relation to former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt who is a known "Friend of China" and who met many of China’s most influential leaders, including the great dictator Mao Zedong himself. Sieren and Schmidt produced very influential books, articles, and interviews. As a result, Frank Sieren became a superstar in all things related to China in the German-speaking world (his books became bestsellers in Germany and have been translated into Chinese), and a famed public speaker and moderator on Sino-German relations –political and cultural. He lives in China –in Beijing, mainly- for almost two decades now. Not always easy, I guess –the air quality, the traffic jams, the party dictatorship- but as the expat saying goes: Someone’s got to do it! Best of luck! [GO TO FRANK SIEREN'S WEBSITE]

Thorsten Pattberg with Wang Jisi, China’s most respected expert on the United States

裴德思和王缉思（09/2013）

Wang Jisi is Professor and the Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University. In 2012, he was named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers and “China’s most respected expert on the United States” by Foreign Policy magazine. He is or was also the supervisor of quite a few of my friends here, so it was good to see him in public at ThinkInChina in Bridge Cafe in Beijing today. Go to Wang’s Talk. Go to ThinkInChina. Go to Foreign Policy.

Thorsten Pattberg with Ashis Nandy, Famed Indian Sociologist and Public Intellectual

Thorsten Pattberg with Ashis Nandy, famed Indian sociologist and public intellectual

BEIJING - Described as the champion of India’s lower classesand promoter of human rights, justice, and equality in an India that is notoriously plagued by corruption, caste, and almost unbearable income inequality, letting alone political chaos. Ashis Nandy is one of the leading figures of post-colonial studies in India, and known for his bold, controversial, and fearless critique of the establishment. Recently, Nandy is engaging in the Dialogue among Civilizations with China, and joined the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies of Peking University at the Deng Feng Forum in Henan province entitled: Chinese Civilization and World Civilization.

[The Nandy Affair/The New Yorker] [A Conversation withNandy/New York Times]

Thorsten Pattberg with Tampalawela Dhammaratana, UNESCO Consultant, Division for Philosophy and Ethics

Dr. Tampalawela Dhammaratana, a Buddhist grandmaster and Frenchand Sri Lankan national, lives in Paris and embarked on a life-long journey for the promotion of Buddhism in the world. He is currently the Director of Buddhist Links at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Pattberg with Roger T. Ames, August 2013

Ames, Roger T. 安樂哲| Center for Chinese Studies | Pattberg, Thorsten 裴德思 | Peking University

With friend and spiritual mentor Roger T. Ames, sinologist, educator, and ethicist of Hawaii University. Roger believes we should get rid of the term ‘Confucianism’ and call it by its real name: Rujia or Ruxue:

“I am not saying that ruxue has the answers to the world’s problems; but it has very important contribution to make.”

Roger T. Ames: We are getting rid of the term 'Confucianism'

Roger T. Ames: The Class of Ru

Add wushu, shengren, junzi and zhongguo meng to the global language!

DO NOT translate Chinese key terminologies!". This is true for kungfu, wushu, shengren, junzi, and... the zhongguo meng. Thorsten Pattberg, a disciple of Ji Xianlin, Gu Zhengkun, and Tu Weiming from Peking University explains why the correct names and the language of origin matter for inclusion into World History... a field that to this day is literally Chinese-free. [...] One day in June 2013; IAHS, Peking University.

Shanghai Daily - The Chinese dream (by Emily Yao)

Thanks for quoting goes to Emily Yao from Shanghai Daily: "It's not about a definition, but more about universality," Thorsten Pattberg, a doctor of letters and research fellow at Peking University, said of Xi's concept. "You, I and everyone have dreams. The question becomes: Can you fulfill your dreams in China and not elsewhere?" (July 30, 2013)

Pattberg with famed journalist Frank Ching in Beijing, July 2013

Certainly one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining talks I've heard at Peking University this year, also because it wasn't the usual propaganda work (the speaker is ethnic Chinese, but a naturalized American citizen). Frank Ching, famed journalist [Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the list is long] talked about Chinese nationalism, nationality, and the identity crisis of overseas Chinese. [The event took place in a little classroom, not one of the halls, letting alone one of the big auditoriums.] There are so many brilliant observations in his talk (read the transcript here), and the one that resonates best with my experience was the fact that China officially holds onto "all descendants of its people who emigrated overseas and claims them as its own." This, of course, makes all ethnic Chinese in the US potential spies, and most of the people of Singapore "foreigners in their own country." Chilling.

Censorship and Internet with Chinese Characteristics

TOKYO/BEIJING - Global Research TV, Canada - James Corbett is a Japan-based famed investigative journalist, host, and editor of well-known Corbett Report conducted this exclusive interview on current and relevant global topics such as cyber-espionage, internet and censorship, US-China relations, and the American dream vs the Chinese dream. [GO TO YOUTUBE] [GLOBAL RESEARCH TV]

Thorsten Pattberg with Gu Zhengkun, famed Daoist and Confucian scholar

Thorsten Pattberg 裴德思 and Gu Zhengkun 辜正坤, famed Daoist andConfucian scholar, professor of English literature, linguist, and Director of the Institute for World Literature and Comparative Studies at Peking University. Many people think that Professor Gu’s translation Lao Zi: The Book of Tao and Teh is maybe the most elegant in the English language. [BACK TO MAIN]

Thorsten Pattberg with John G. Blair and Jerusha McCormack, authors of Western Civilization with Chinese Comparison

(from left:) J. McCormack, J. G. Blair, and T. Pattberg

By the way, this 622-pages (3rd ed) course/resource book makes a great and inspirational read in China Studies. It’s all in there: the money-grabbing, the concubines, ghosts, arranged marriages, castration, the Europeans, the misery, the rejuvenation, the ecology, the Diasporas, the modern Chinese family… [See Review]

--Blair, John G., Hull McCormack, Jerusha (2010), Western Civilizations with Chinese Comparisons, Fudan University Press, Shanghai [BACK TO MAIN]

German Confucianism at Peking University

THIS PLACE is where I work, eat, sleep - 24/7. It’s a little building on PKU campus, close to the great lake. I got a gym card for daily shower. It’s the reclusive life of a junzi, no?

Anyways, it is here where I found inspiration for my essays on 'Shengren,' 'The End of Translation,' 'Vocab Wars,' 'Language Imperialism,' and 'Lingualism' which have been syndicated in East Asia's media, by circulation alone, millions of copies. [GO TO WEBSITE]

Thorsten Pattberg and Francis Xavier Clooney

The director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, Prof. Francis X. Clooney, today visited our IAHS. I remember well reading Prof. Clooney's masterpieces 'Divine Mother, Blessed Mother' during my formative years in Edinburgh, and his 'Comparative Theology' during my time at Harvard. [VISIT HIS TALK AT PKU] [BACK TO MAIN]

Peking University - Rise of the junzi

Peking University - Rise of the junzi

PKU is the mother lode of Chinese education, and Confucianism (rujia) wants to cultivate the 'junzi' - the ideal scholar. At the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Pattberg explains how an old tradition is on the march again. [BACK TO MAIN]

Michael Witzel with Thorsten Pattberg, Tokyo 2013

Professor Michael Witzel invited me to Harvard University back in 2010 so that I could use collections and library resources of the earliest European missionaries in China dating back to 1649. Although there was little funding for such an original project, it nevertheless proved to be very successful, cumulating into my works on translation history and, ultimately, the re-emergence of the shengren. See China Daily, Japan Times. The list goes on. [photo: Tokyo, May 24, 2013].

END TRANSLATION & CREATE GLOBAL LANGUAGE

End Translation, instead adopt foreign key terminologies, and help to create a truly global language. [BACK TO MAIN].

LANGUAGE IMPERIALISM

What is 'Language Imperialism?'

Other than in linguistic imperialism, in which one language replaces another, in language imperialism certain terminologies are translated into familiar vocabulary of one's own language tradition. For example, the early European missionaries translated key words in the Confucian classics into biblical taxonomy, and claimed that China could easily become a Christian nation this way. [BACK TO MAIN]

Thorsten Pattberg and Iranian Gholamreza Aavani in Beijing

"For the perfect mystic, a person that made this spiritual journey, God is never absent, never has been absent, once he reached there." – Gholamreza Aavani is a leading Islamic philosopher, historian of the Persian intellectual tradition, and the former head of the Iranian Academyfor Philosophy.

Prof. Aavani accepted the invitation of Tu Weiming to conduct research and teaching at PKU during spring term 2013. (IAHS, Peking University, April 3, 2013).