China’s Silk Road
Dr. William Wei
History Department
University of Colorado at Boulder
The IFDS on the Silk Road of China was a marvelous as well as informative experience. After returning to America, I immediately began revising some of my lectures for my Introduction to Chinese History course (History 1608). Specifically, I revised my lectures on the Han dynasty, devoting an entire lecture on the Silk Road and its development. Among other things, I incorporated what I learned from Professor Haiyang Zhang, Central University of Nationalities, about the cultural ecology along the Silk Road. In addition, I was able to talk about aspects of the Silk Road in a very personal way, adding anecdotes that enlivened an already interesting subject.
Besides revising my lectures, I was able to use what I had learned while serving as a Visiting Scholar to the Community College of Aurora where I assisted them in the internationalization of their curriculum. Among the several public lectures I gave was one on the Silk Road on November 10, 2008. It was a well-received lecture. Naturally, the audience enjoyed when I talked about my CIEE experience about the places I visited and the people I met. Not incidentally, Jessica Horak wrote an article about me, “A World of Experience at Community College” in the Aurora Sentinel. It included an announcement about the public lecture and a picture taken of me during the Silk Road IFDS when we visited the Jade Gate.
In the future, I will offer an upper-division history course on the Silk Road, one that will discuss its origins and development, focusing on the various regional civilizations and kingdoms along it. That will, of course, necessarily take me geographically from China across Central Asia and the Middle East to the Mediterranean. Historically, it will take me from the Han dynasty to the present, when I talk about the new Silk Road. Meanwhile, I would like to note that as a result of my attendance of a 2007 IFDS in Hyderabad, India, I will be offering a course called “Chindia: A Comparison Between the Developmental Experience of China and India.”