A Lecture-Concert by

Professor Jindong Cai, Music Director and Conductor, Stanford Symphony Orchestra

In collaboration with members of

The Peking University Symphony Orchestra

NOV 12, 2015

19:30 – 21:00

Stanford Center at Peking University

At the turn of the twentieth century, the foundations of traditional Chinese society were crumbling. Many patriotic and idealistic young people went overseas to seek inspiration and education, determined to learn from the outside world and forge a new path forward for China. Beethoven was introduced to China during this period by a series of remarkable artists and intellectuals who learned about the composer while studying in Japan. The polymath artist, writer, and monk Li Shutong was the first Chinese to write about Beethoven in a short, but revealing, article called  “The Sage of Music.”  Xiao Youmei was the first Chinese to bring the sound of Beethoven to Chinese people.  After his studies in Japan and Germany, Xiao came back to China in 1921 and began promoting music education at Peking University, where he created the first Chinese symphony orchestra to perform Beethoven’s music. Since then, Beethoven has become an iconic figure in China and played a role in many major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalization of US-China relations.  Beethoven became a hero to reformers, intellectuals, music lovers, and party cadres alike. The new Penguin Special “Beethoven in China,” by Stanford professor and orchestra conductor Jindong Cai and culture journalist Sheila Melvin tells the compelling story of Beethoven and the Chinese people.

In the first part of this special lecture-concert, Professor Cai will share his own experience of hearing Beethoven’s music for the first time in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. He will also briefly tell the story of how Beethoven and his music became so deeply rooted in modern China. The second part of the event will feature a 15-member ensemble of musicians from the Peking University Orchestra – a first-ever re-creation of the 1922 orchestra that premiered Beethoven in Beijing. The performance, conducted by Maestro Cai, will give the audience a unique historical experience and allow them to travel back in time and hear how Beethoven’s music sounded when it was first performed at Peking University.  

The brain works with electricity. Modulating the electrical function of the brain at different sites of the brain can give rise to information about how the brain works and how it may be broken in certain disorders. In the next decades of the century, we will be approaching the field of electriceuticals rather than pharmaceuticals in the treatment of many neuropsychiatric disorders. In this talk, Prof. Parvizi will give an overview of the lessons learned from the time of classical stimulations of the brain until the current technological advancements in this field.

Josef Parvizi MD PHD is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and director of Stanford Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program. He received his MD from the University of Oslo and PhD in neurosciences from the University of Iowa. He completed his medical internship at Mayo Clinic and Neurology Residency at BIDMC-Harvard before joining the UCLA for fellowship training in Clinical Epilepsy and Neurophysiology.  Prof. Parvizi moved to Stanford University in July 2007 and started the Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program (SHICEP). His research is now supported by NIH, Stanford NeuroVentures Program, and Stanford School of Medicine. His expertise is in functional mapping of the human brain using the three methods of electrocorticography, electrical brain stimulation, and functional imaging.

What have China and Japan learned from each other? How has this long interaction shaped the images the two countries have of each other since imperial times to the present? Tracing the different phases of learning between China and Japan from the Tang, Meiji, and post 1972, Ezra Vogel will make suggestions about how the two countries might deal with history issues.

Ezra Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan in 1950, he studied sociology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in 1958. He then went to Japan for two years to study the Japanese language and conduct research interviews with middle-class families. From 1961-1964, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He was director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center and the Asia Center. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and, in 1967, professor. Professor Vogel retired from teaching on June 30, 2000.

Drawing on his original fieldwork in Japan, he wrote Japan's New Middle Class (1963). A book based on several years of interviewing and reading materials from China, Canton Under Communism (1969), won the Harvard University Press faculty book of the year award. The Japanese edition of his book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) is the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. His study of Guangdong is published as One Step Ahead: Guangdong Under Reform (1989). His book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011) became a best seller in China. He lectures frequently in Asia, both in Chinese and Japanese. He has visited East Asia every summer since 1958 and has spent a total of over six years in Asia.

This event is fully booked. 

Date: October 20, 2015  (Tuesday)

Time: 16:30 – 18:00  

Language: Lecture in English

Venue: Stanford Center at Peking University

China’s controversial one-child policy, launched in 1980, continues to generate controversy and misinformation.  Several generalizations about the policy are widely believed:  that Mao Zedong consistently opposed efforts to limit China’s population growth; that as a result China’s population continued to grow rapidly until after his death, necessitating the switch to mandatory and coercive birth limits; that the launching of the one-child policy led to a dramatic decline in China’s fertility rate; and that due to the one-child policy, China and the world benefited from 400 million births that were thereby prevented. These are just a few of the common claims about China’s one-child policy that are myths, contradicted by the facts.  This talk by Prof Whyte, which is based on a paper co-authored with demographers Wang Feng and Yong Cai, is designed to systematically correct the record. 

Martin K. Whyte is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology, Emeritus. He was Professor of Sociology at Harvard from 2000 to 2015. Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan and George Washington University. His research and teaching specialties are comparative sociology, sociology of the family, sociology of development, the sociological study of contemporary China, and the study of post-communist transitions. Within sociology, Whyte’s primary interest has been in historical and comparative questions—why particular societies are organized the way they are and how differences across societies affect the nature of people’s lives. Whyte is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Sociological Research Association, the Population Association of America, and the National Committee for U.S. China Relations.