As the opening of an academic centre in Beijing demonstrates, Irish Studies are gaining in popularity in China, writes Clifford Coonan
There are not too many Irish literary links with China, but one of the high points was George Bernard Shaw's one-day visit to Shanghai on February 17th, 1933. Shanghai was then partially divided into concessions run by colonial powers, including Britain and France, and he was there to sympathise with the Chinese struggle for independence and early efforts to introduce democracy. He was received by Madam Song Qingling, widow of China's first president, Sun Yat-Sen, at 29 Rue Molière.
Both were honorary chairpersons of the World Committee against Imperialist War and discussed the burning issues of the day - the Japanese invasion, women's rights and Hitler. Shaw also met leading Chinese literary figures, including the great writer Lu Xun. Over lunch, he learned how to use chopsticks.
Now there is a little piece of China that is forever Irish. The first official Irish Studies Centre in China opened in March at the prestigious Beijing Foreign Studies University, and pictures of Shaw, along with Beckett, Joyce and others, adorn the walls of the centre's small offices in the university, in the west of the capital.
THE CENTRE IS conceived as a nexus for information and cultural awareness within China itself as well as exchanges between China and Ireland. One of the driving forces behind the centre is Dr Jerusha McCormack, who formerly taught courses in American, Anglo-Irish and English literature at University College Dublin. She has just returned to China to teach for another semester alongside her colleague John Blair and Carol Taaffe, a doctoral student from Trinity College.
McCormack opened the centre with a paper on Oscar Wilde and the Daoist sage Zhuangzi (or Chuang Tsu, as he was known in Wilde's time). She discovered that Wilde read and reviewed the first complete English translation of Zhuangzi's work in 1890.
"In fact, his reading of Zhuangzi transformed Wilde into the radical and brilliant thinker we know today: one need only look at The Soul of Man under Socialism or the essays in Intentions to see Zhuangzi's impact," says McCormack.
"The aim of the Irish Studies Centre is to provide a valuable focus for wider teaching and research about the Irish economy, politics, history and cultural environment," says the American-born teacher. "The students are interested and curious and they like to ask questions," she says, as we enter the low building which houses the centre.
The first thing you see is a mirror, which, as McCormack points out, is not to check your appearance after a brisk walk through the dusty precincts, but to deflect evil spirits away from the building.
The centre is the first permanent facility for Irish studies in China. Nanjing University offers courses in Irish literature, while Fudan University in Shanghai sponsors an annual George Bernard Shaw essay-writing contest. The Beijing centre is kitted out with books provided by the Irish Embassy, which has been a key supporter of the project - Ambassador Declan Kelleher opened the facility.
THEY ALSO HELP organise visiting speakers, among them Joyce experts Prof Murray Beja and Prof Ellen Carol Jones and Prof Anne Fogarty of UCD. The students are an enthusiastic group, with different interests in Ireland and eclectic views on the country.
Tang Pingping (24) is from Anhui province and is very interested in Ireland's economic history.
"I'm interested in the history of Ireland, and the famine and colonial history, and wanted to find out more. Before I chose it I knew it was a green island with four million people and that the economy grows very fast after taking part in Europe," she says.
Zou Heng, who has taken Aileen as her English name, is 23 and comes from Yantai in Shandong province.
"The literature interested me. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray and thought that Wilde was a great author, and I'm interested in his masterpieces. My image of Ireland is of a country that is still developing rapidly, that has the potential to be another Switzerland," she says.
Other students remark how amazing it is that a country of four million people can produce four Nobel prize winners for literature, while China has produced none (Gao Xingjian, who won it in 2000, is officially French).
Luo Laiming has a more traditionally rustic view of Ireland.
"What strikes me is the way people live their lives. They are content with the simple life. I'm very interested in how the nation evolved and how the idea of being Irish evolved," says Luo.
Whether the materialistic, endlessly complex and profoundly restless Ireland of today can live up to the peaceful, mystical Ireland gleaned from Synge and Yeats is something for Laiming's teachers to assess and communicate.
Clifford Coonan is China Correspondent of The Irish Times