The Assimilation of Jews in China – a Talk by Dr. Kang Liao

In his 1989, book, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," author Samuel P. Huntington stated that post-Cold War global politics had entered a new phase in which wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures.

Dr. Kang Liao will discuss various “clashes of civilizations” and how some historically oppressed groups still flourished. He will focus on the assimilation of Jews in Kaifeng, China in the 1850s as one model. Liao, a scholar of the work of Pearl S. Buck, will draw references from Buck’s 1948 novel, Peony, to understand the unique experiences of the Kaifeng Jews. Q-and-A will follow.

About the speaker: Dr. Liao teaches English-to-Chinese translation at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and is an Associate Professor teaching Chinese at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. He authored the book, Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Bridge Across the Pacific. In his analysis of her work, he credits Buck's portrayal of Chinese peasants as changing the image of the Chinese people in the American mind and attributes the popularity of Buck’s work with advancing the 1943 repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).