My First Chinese Academic Conference

Mixed feelings about it, growing more mixed but in a positive sense--at first I thought it was pretty awful. Three things about it that were very marked. First, it was unquestionably an old boy's club, something my advisor from the States benefited a lot from (being and old boy and a tenured professor), but which was strikingly uncomfortable to me. A few women were admitted to the ranks of the old boys, but I felt there was a certain amount of hostility toward them--though it was ostensibly all based on the content of their work. I was not competent to judge how justified the harshness level of the criticisms were, so I'll let that go… It was striking, though, to sit at the final banquet at an almost all-female table. It's hard to imagine that happening at an American conference.

The second thing I noticed, going along with the "old" of old boy's club, was that the difference between graduate students and professors was a vast and yawning abyss. Actually, even young professors weren't really listened to very much. It reminded me yet again what a traditionalist discipline this is: accumulated age and experience are really seen as the only way to gain credibility (having had the right teacher helps too). Dying young (i.e., 60) is not only a great tragedy but a strategic mistake--that's when you're in your prime, as far as the scholarly world is concerned! In retrospect this makes me deeply appreciate the American attitude toward "youngsters" like me--even if we don't always get as much respect as we'd like at conferences, we still get some! There is at least some excitement about new research and new ideas that graduate students might be contributing, yes no? (Photo at left is the official conference photo, which came rolled up in its own scroll box.)

The third thing that seems worth mentioning is how there was almost no time scheduled for questions or discussion. The presentations were scheduled on a strict ten minute per paper time limit. Almost all the papers were also printed in an accompanying 3-volume (!) set of conference proceedings. Of course the presentations rarely matched the papers, the latter stretching to dozens of pages at times. The focus was very much on the written versions, which is to say, almost no one took their spoken presentation very seriously. It was mainly a plug for why, in almost a thousand pages of conference papers, a reader should take the time to read this particular paper. This is not to say there wasn't discussion. It's just that the discussion took place over dinner, in carefully controlled conditions among carefully selected participants. (Hint, I didn't hear any of the discussion.)

Occasionally there would be shreds of time left over in a session, where panelists might discuss among themselves, or a venerable grandfather-figure from the audience might instruct a youngster on the error of his or her ways. The chair of the panel also served as discussant for all the papers. At one point I saw the (old boy) discussant lambaste the (young female) presenter for about five minutes straight, though I couldn't understand on what grounds. I could tell it was pretty harsh, though, from the look on her face.

A lot of the content went over my head, partly because it was really specialized and in formalized language, partly because it diverged so much from the written papers that I couldn't reconcile the two enough to get anything out of it.

Good points: I captured one paper very close to the topic on which I'm working with LGs, which wasn't printed in the proceedings. I became acquainted with a middle-aged Korean lady who was highly enthusiastic about being friends with me. See below photos of our ramble in the garden behind the hotel. And the location--up on a mountain outside the city--while pretty inconvenient for me, included said garden, pretty landscape, and three square meals a day (all you can eat buffet). That's something American conferences could definitely learn from the Chinese on. I also found it quite civilized that everyone had their own tea-cup, and the tea was constantly refilled.







Funniest moment: there was a presenter whose annoying cell phone had been constantly going off for most of the conference. While he was presenting, his cell phone went off again--and he answered it!!! Then he went on talking patiently for about five minutes, while everyone sat in discomfort and hilarity. It was unbelievable. Fortunately or unfortunately, the organizer of the conference happened to be there and had the status to chew him out. He lost his turn, which was only right--but unfortunate, because I was interested in what he was saying, and he was one of the few that was close enough to my topic that I could follow it.