Teaching China through NYC connections
CACI Nov 7, 2025 Seminar
“China’s global reach is taking many forms in many arenas: migration, global media networks, higher education, scientific research, regional and global multilateral credit institutions, expansion of Chinese NGOs abroad, and so forth.
To understand China’s global impact in these areas, scholars cannot artificially seal Chinese phenomena within China’s geographical borders.
This applies not just to topics that are intrinsically international or regional. Even subjects that may appear purely ‘domestic’—such as rural development, land grabs, social movements, corruption, governance, and elite politics—are seldom really so.”
- Ching Kwan Lee (2017) interview on Global China Studies
How do we take advantage of NYC to teach and study China?
“Alison Stewart: You teach creative nonfiction writing at CUNY. What is something that you as a writer found challenging that maybe you as a teacher had assigned a student or something you've told your students to do that now you had to do it?
Ava Chin: That's a good question. I'm always telling my students like, "Get out of the classroom. Go out into the world. Report about a subculture, a subculture that you have access to." What I realized is that I was the person to write this book because of where my family sits, having such long-standing roots in New York. I'm a fifth-generation New Yorker. We've been in New York since the 1880s. What's great is to go into the community. I don't have to go to China. I don't leave the country in order to be connected with my roots. I just have to take a train down to Chinatown and I'm there.”
- Interview with Ava Chin on WNYC (2023)
NYC Cultural and Educational Institutions
Asia Society
Museum of China in America
New York Chinese Cultural Center
Museum of the City of New York (Organizing Chinatown Exhibit)
New York Asian Film Festival
NYC University Research Institutes
U.S.-Asia Law Institute (NYU)
Asian American/Asian Research Institute (CUNY)
NYC China/Chinese American Organizations
China Institute in America
Committee of 100
National Committee of US China Relations
The Serica Initiative
NYC Activist and Social Organizations
CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities
China Labor Watch
Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association
Human Rights in China
Activity #1: A Walk Through Chinatown
Objective: To identify markers in Chinatown that point to transnational connections between China and the U.S.
Relevant Readings:
Ava Chin’s Mott Street (2023)
Instructions:
Activity #2: China in the Museum
Objective: To analyze how China is represented in museums in New York City.
Relevant Readings:
Kirk A. Denton on “Museums, Memorial Sites, and Exhibitionary Culture in the People’s Republic of China” (2005)
Instructions:
2. Accessibility, Familiarity, and Leveraging
Student Knowledge and Experiences
How do we encourage our students to make connections between their everyday experiences with China?
“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.
When teachers recognize that students bring with them a wealth of knowledge, experience, and insight, the learning environment becomes one of discovery, where students realize they know more than they think they know and are capable of transforming their own learning and understanding of the world.”
— bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994)
Activity #3: Immigration Oral History
Objective: To understand how family immigration experiences are intertwined with broader historical forces in China and the U.S.
Relevant Readings:
Mae Ngai’s The Chinese Question (2021)
Instructions:
Activity #4: Global China in the News
Objective: To identify the many ways China appears in the news and understand the impact of global China in different social domains.
Relevant Readings:
Jeffrey Wasserstrom on “China & Globalization” (2014)
Instructions:
3. Online Resources