1st Conference on “Modernism and the Orient”
China’s First Conference on “Modernism and the Orient” took place June 13-14 at Santai
Shanzhuang on the western side of the West Lake in Hangzhou. Jointly-sponsored by Zhejiang
University (ZJU) School of International Study’s (SIS) Institute of English Literatures, University of
New Orleans College of Liberal Arts, the Editing Board of Foreign Literature, Zhejiang Association
of Foreign Languages and Literatures, and Translators’ Association of Zhejiang, the event had its
theme singularly illuminated by the surrounding hills and waters, a setting compared by Marco Polo
700 years ago to Venice and lauded as “the noblest and most beautiful in the world.”
The conference was intended to be a preliminary to a 3rd International Conference on
“Modernism and the Orient” to be held in Hangzhou in June 2010. The first two international
conferences on the topic were held at Yale University (US) in 1996 and at Cambridge University
(UK) in 2004, respectively. 76 scholars and students from 28 Chinese and American universities and
organizations attended the Hangzhou Conference, and 28 of them delivered papers exploring the
relationships of China, Japan, and India to western modernism across the fields of literature, music,
fine arts, religion, and philosophy.
The opening session on June 13 was presided by ZJU SIS Associate Dean Yin Qiping. Welcome
speeches by ZJU leader Fan Jieping and ZJU SIS Dean He Lianzhen were followed by five keynote
addresses: Qian Zhaoming of University of New Orleans on “William Carlos Williams, Marianne
Moore, and Their Hangzhou Collaborators”; Sun Hong of Renmin University of China on “Ezra
Pound’s Misreading/Reconstruction of Classic Chinese Poetry”; Zhang Deming of Zhejiang
University on “Kafka’s Imagination of China: At The Building of Great Wall of China”; Ou Hong of
Sun Yat-sen University on “J. H. Prynne’s Chinese Poetic Flavour”; and Gao Fen of Zhejiang
University on “Virginia Woolf and Sense of Reality: From the Perspectives of Chinese and Western
Poetics”.
Three discussion panels were held in the afternoon. Eight panelists (including two graduate
students) in Group A gave papers. Their topics ranged from “Cubist View of Pound and Moore,”
“Chinese Music in Cathay,” “Cutural Context in ‘The River-merchant’s Wife,’” and “Creative
Treason in Pound’s Translation ‘Lament of the Frontier Guard” to “Orientlism in Amy Tan’s Joy
Luck Club,” “Cubism in William Gass and Yu Hua,” “Artistic Freedom in John Fowles’ Fiction,” and
“Construction of Masculinity in Modern Chinese and Western Literatures.” Five scholars in Group B
spoke--one on Emily Dickinson and China, two on Eliot, and two on Richard Wright’s Haiku poems.
Panelists in Group C focused on “Modernist Theories and the Orient.” They discussed topics
covering cross-cultural Chinese studies, late symbolism’s salvation discourse and Hinduism, Zen and
Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation,” Zhuangzi and Oscar Wilde, Wang Guowei’s Artistic Realm
Theory in the perspective of phenomenology, American transcendentalism and ancient Chinese
civilization, Wallace Stevens and Chinese tea culture.
On the morning of June 14, three more keynote addresses were given: Fan Jieping of Zhejiang
University on “Modernity of the Literary Mask: Doeblin, Walser, and China”; Zhang Jian of Beijing
Foreign Studies University on “Hindu and Buddhist Legacy in The Waste Land and Four Quartets,”
and Lin Lidan of Indiana-Purdue University on Beckett and Chinese Music.” These were followed
by summaries of the panel discussions by representatives. In his closing address, conference director
Qian Zhaoming encouraged increased exploration of the topic and asked participants to return to
Hangzhou for the 3rd international conference on the theme. In the afternoon, participants took a tour
of the former residence of Hu Xueyan, a successful Qing dynasty businessman and Hefang Street by
the West Lake. The tour added a finishing touch to the success of the event.