Professor Lung Yingtai, Visiting Professor of City University's Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, had delivered us the lecture titled "More Than Just Fist-fighting - A Cultural Perspective on Taiwan" on 26 February 2004. The third of the series on Famous Scholars/Writers Lecture was jointly organized by the Library and the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics.
The Taiwanese democracy has been both hailed as a grand achievement and jeered as a chaotic mess. Many mainland Chinese marvel at the degree of freedom achieved in the island and yet find the call for independence difficult to understand. Many Hong Kong people envy the solidarity and guts of the Taiwanese and yet have contempt for the disorder and the disrespect for law. The international commentators express concerns over traces of the Taiwanese nationalism. In the lecture, Professor Lung Yingtai shared her views on democracy in Taiwan with the participants.
Professor Lung noted that observations of Taiwan, whether from the Chinese-speaking world or the international arena, mostly focused on political events. However, she believes that without a historical and particularly cultural perspective, the political reading of a society can be very misleading. Cultural transformation, brought about by political liberalization, is easily invisible to outsiders but goes far deeper than any political maneuvers. The Taiwanese experiment with democracy in the Chinese cultural context has significant implications for greater China.
Born in Taiwan, Professor Lung Yingtai graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages of Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University. She furthered her study in the United States and obtained her PhD degree in English from the Kansas State University. She has taught at New York's Mercy College, National Central University of Taiwan and the Sinologisches Institut of University of Heidelberg of Germany. From 1999 to February 2003, Professor Lung was the first Director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Taipei City Government. As a famous writer, Professor Lung's article on culture, society and current affairs have made great impact on the Chinese-speaking world.
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Selection of Books and Articles Authored by Prof. Lung Yingtai
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