Robin Wang, 7/19/07
Title:
Bridging the Gap between East and West
Header:
Inspired by the life work of a 16th-century Jesuit leader, Associate Professor Robin R. Wang uses her personal and professional passions to bring China/Asia and LMU closer together.
Feature:
Growing up in China, years before she ever heard of Loyola Marymount University, Associate Professor Robin R. Wang was inspired by the work of Matteo Ricci, S.J., a 16th-century Jesuit intellectual and initiator of cultural relations between China and the West.
Wang was born in Shanghai, China; raised in Xi'an, the ancient capital; and educated -- among other places -- in Beijing at Peking University. Like many Chinese, Wang learned about Ricci (known as Li Madou in Chinese) -- a priest, translator, cartographer, emissary and more -- as a child.
“His lifetime was 1552-1610,” recounts Wang, who is director of LMU’s Asian and Pacific Studies program. “It became his work, his mission, for Europeans in the west to know about China and Chinese to know about the west. He was the first to translate the Chinese Classics into a Western language (Latin). Today a wise Chinese, Kong Fuzi (551-479 B.C.E.) is known around world as “Confucius,” which was Ricci’s own Latinization.”
That tradition continues. Last spring and this summer, Wang was a key member of four official LMU delegations that visited universities and cultural sites in six Chinese metropolises: Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Hong Kong.
The goals of these get-acquainted and exploratory journeys included making contacts and promoting intellectual and cultural exchanges.
“This is a beginning step for LMU’s engagement with China,” Wang says. "We have met people, discussed with our counterparts, and created many exciting opportunities for LMU faculty and students to visit, teach and study in China, and also to bring international scholars and students to LMU."
In Los Angeles, Wang has long since been doing her part to help new generations connect with the other side of the Pacific Rim. She cites a Chinese proverb: “Teachers are the architects of the human soul.”
To her LMU students, Wang explains the yin-yang theory and other venerable Chinese philosophies. “It’s an intellectual tradition thousands of years old,” she says.
The professor has also penned books and articles on topics such as Chinese Philosophy in an Era of Globalization, Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture and “Dong Zhongshu’s Transformation of Yin/Yang Theory and Contesting of Gender Identity.”
For all her personal accomplishments, Wang traces her emulation back to Matteo Ricci. “He’s a good model for me: approaching cultural appreciation and exchange in the spirit of friendship and mutual respect,” she says.