Ling U

On February 3rd, 2023, Prof. Zong-qi Cai gave a keynote speech at the first Italian conference on the teaching of Chinese literature hosted by Sapienza University of Rome. In this keynote speech, Prof. Cai introduced his dream about publishing a book series to promote Chinese culture and poetry in the English-speaking world. It was during his teaching years in USA that he made this dream come true by collaborating with renowned scholars to publish the How to Read Chinese Literature book series with Columbia University Press. These book projects aim to overcome the four huge barriers for teaching Chinese poetry in the English-speaking world. Prof. Cai also demonstrated the highlights of the podcast program and video program, which are the key knowledge transfer projects of AIGCS that derived from the How to Read Chinese Poetry book project. At last, Prof. Cai shared his visions about promoting Chinese literature with more multi-media projects for knowledge tranfer.

Prof. Cai was invited to give this keynote speech by Prof. Federica Casalin, associate Professor of Chinese Language and literature coordinator of the PhD Course in Civilizations of Asia and Africa, Department of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome. In her invitation letter, she specifically expressed her thanks for Prof. Cai’s inspiring series on how to read Chinese poetry and prose. She recently started listening to the How to Read Chinese Poetry podcast programs hosted and produced by Prof. Cai. The book series and podcast program, as described by Prof. Casalin, “are enlightening both in terms of content and methodology”.