Beethoven in Beijing: Film Screening with Jennifer Lin and Lei Liang

Please join the 21st Century China Center and UC San Diego Library for a film screening of “Beethoven in Beijing,” followed by a conversation with director Jennifer Lin moderated by Distinguished Professor Lei Liang on Thursday, January 19 from 3:30-6:00 p.m. in the Seuss Room at Geisel Library. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Fifty years ago, President Nixon pulled back the bamboo curtain separating the United States and China—and the Philadelphia Orchestra stepped across the threshold. After Western music was targeted for elimination during the Cultural Revolution, a historic visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973 touched hearts and rekindled a love for the music despite years of silence. Narrated by American and Chinese musicians and historians, the film explores the impact of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s historical tour on China both then and now.

Program

• 3:30 p.m.: Pre-event reception
• 4:00 p.m.: Film screening
• 5:30 p.m.: A conversation with director Jennifer Lin, moderated by Lei Liang
• 6:00 p.m.: Event concludes

Speakers

Jennifer Lin, Director

Jennifer Lin is an award-winning journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker. She created the feature-length documentary, “Beethoven in Beijing,” which was nationally broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances, and has published a companion book by the same name. For 31 years, Lin worked at “The Philadelphia Inquirer” as a reporter, including posts as a foreign correspondent in China, a financial correspondent on Wall Street, and a national correspondent in Washington, DC. She is also author of a family memoir, “Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family.” Lin is currently working on a documentary, “Beyond Yellowface,” about eliminating racial stereotypes from ballet and opera.

Distinguished Professor Lei Liang, Moderator

Lei Liang is a Chinese-born American composer whose work has received accolades from academia and music critics. He currently serves as the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Music at UC San Diego. The winner of the 2011 Rome Prize, Liang is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland Award, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, a Creative Capital Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His concerto for saxophone and orchestra, Xiaoxiang, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2015. His orchestral work, “A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams,” won the prestigious 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. As a scholar and conservationist of cultural traditions, he edited and co-edited five books and editions and published more than forty articles.

About the 21st Century China Center

The 21st Century China Center was established in 2011 at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS). It is a leading university-based think tank that produces scholarly research and informs policy discussions on China and U.S.-China relations.

The center’s core activities emphasize both scholarly research and interactive engagement. They include collaborative research projects, conferences, workshops, policy forums, industry roundtables, publications, public lectures, cultural events, and youth programs.

Parking and Directions

For directions and parking information for this event, click here. All visitors to the UC San Diego campus are required to display a valid parking pass. The closest parking to Geisel Library is the Hopkins Parking Structure. For information about accessible parking on campus, click here.