Program Start Date: Oct 7 2016
James A. Benn McMaster University Friday October 7, 2016 Thomson Hall 317 11:30am The values associated with tea today— that it is natural, health- giving, detoxifying, spiritual, stimulating, refreshing, and so on— are not new ideas, but ones shaped in Tang times, by poets. Only a handful of poems were written about tea prior to
Program Start Date: May 19 2016
This talk explained that the story of East Asian development is the means to understanding the nature of economic development worldwide. Joe Studwell dissected the region’s history to show how, for many years, heady economic growth rates masked the most divided continent in the world – a north-east Asian group of states that is the
Program Start Date: May 13 2016
Since the mid-2000s China’s central government has been nancing an aggressive overhaul of its farming sector. Predicating this drive on a need to increase food security, the state has invested billions to rapidly replace small-scale farming households with large-scale, mechanized and commercialized agricultural operators. In so doing, it is fundamentally altering not just rural societies
Program Start Date: Apr 14 2016
This talk goes over a historic explanation on the social and environmental causes of the 1931 flood. The flood in 1931 is believed to be the deadliest disaster in 20th century China with one-fourth of China’s population affected. But the conventional view that regards the flood as an “unavoidable” natural disaster does not explain why key