Yang Shuping’s University of Maryland commencement address and its attendant furor is nothing new, as Pamela Kyle Crossley points out. In 1999, my classmates and I—in the Yale college courtyard from which Yifu Dong just graduated—woke up to find the entryways plastered with posters condemning the American attack on the Belgrade embassy.

Read more at: http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/can-free-speech-american-campuses-withstand-chinese-nationalism.

To conclude my Chinese history lecture course at the University of Kentucky, I introduce my undergraduates to the concept of “soft power” and suggest that Confucius Institutes are emblematic of China’s cultural diplomacy, which aims to project a peaceful image abroad.

Read more at: http://www.thechinabeat.org/?s=Denise+Ho+Whither+the+Year+of+China.

One of the wonderful things about studying Chinese history is that the field is so vast, the language so complex, and the contemporary interest so great that I will never be bored. In teaching a course on modern China, one always gets to add to the syllabus.

Read more at: http://sarantakes.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-cxii-112-eight-questions-chinese.html.

My Thursday afternoon flight from Shanghai to Chicago exhibited a curious phenomenon. United Airlines Flight 836, which went from China to Midwestern America on August 19, 2010, had the most homogenous set of passengers I had ever seen.

Read more at: http://www.thechinabeat.org/?s=Passport+to+the+World.

Many cultural encounters begin with generalizations and limited knowledge of the other. When I tell friends in China that I teach at the University of Kentucky, I am first asked whether I mean the Kentucky of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Read more at: http://www.thechinabeat.org/?s=The+Year+of+China+at+the+University+of+Kentucky.