The changing family dynamics in modern China, shifting away from the traditional, Confucian concept of filial piety centering on the elderly, toward a family structure centering on the children, will be the focus of the next installment of the Modern China Lecture Series at Cal State San Bernardino.
Yunxiang Yan, a professor of anthropology at UCLA, will present “Intergenerational Intimacy: A Redefinition of Filial Piety and Descending Familism in Rural North China,” on Thursday, Oct. 22, from noon-2 p.m. at CSUSB’s John M. Pfau Library, room PL-4005.
The lecture is free and open to the public; parking at the university is $6.
Yan will speak on the changing ideas of family relations and filial piety in China, based on his extensive research in northwestern China's Xiajia village. Yan is a renowned and widely published expert on Chinese society and culture. Event organizers say his talk will be edifying and entertaining, providing insights to Chinese culture and the transformation of its most essential traditions in recent decades.
A native of Beijing, Yunxiang Yan was forced to drop out of school at the age of 12 and spent the subsequent 12 years working as a shepherd and farmer in two Chinese villages during the Cultural Revolution period in China.
“As a young political outcast living and working in two villages during this 12-year period, I had more opportunities than many of my peers to experience the devastating economic hardships (including famine) and the brutal political oppression under radical Maoism,” he wrote in his UCLA faculty profile. “Regardless, I benefited a great deal from living at the very bottom rungs of society as I learned directly from everyday life what really matters to ordinary people, experiencing their struggles for subsistence and meaning in life and sharing their efforts to cope with radical and rapid social changes, while at the same time attempting to maintain, sometimes with great difficulty, a proper sense of the self.”
Yan earned his Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University in 1993, and joined the UCLA faculty in 1996.
The Modern China Lecture Series was initiated to promote awareness of important issues related to China for those on the CSUSB campus and in the community. In 12 lectures and roundtable forums since January 2014, China scholars from UC San Diego, the Claremont Colleges and other institutions have visited the CSUSB campus to share their expertise and opinions.
The Modern China Lecture Series is sponsored by the CSUSB History Club/Phi Alpha Theta Chapter, the CSUSB Department of History, the Intellectual Life Fund, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the College of Extended Learning, the John M. Pfau Library, the College of Business and Pubic Administration, and the University Diversity Committee.
For more information on the Oct. 22 event or the Modern China Lecture Series, contact Jeremy Murray, assistant history professor, at (909) 537-5540 or jmurray@csusb.edu.