Joanna Waley-Cohen is Dean of Arts and Sciences for NYU Shanghai and Professor of History at New York University.

R: Let’s start with college life. We all know that choosing a major in college is one of the most important life choices. How did you decide to do China studies in college?

J: I was good at languages when I was in high school, and I could have continued with the languages that I already knew, which were French and German. However, if I had done that, it would have been a pure literature program. Although I love literature and I read novels all the time, mostly when I should be studying, I did not want to study literature. So I was looking for something different and new to do. And somebody said to me, “why don’t you study a language which otherwise you will never have the opportunity to do?” So I started to think about difficult languages, and of course, Chinese came to my mind. It seemed to me to be the most difficult and unusual thing to do. That’s really why I started to study Chinese.

R: How did you decide to pursue your academic career in doing China studies after graduation from college?

J: After I left Cambridge in the early 1970s, I could not find a job using Chinese. So I decided to become a lawyer, which was what I had always thought I would do. So I went to the English equivalent of law school. Then I got married and I moved to the States, and I could not practice English law in United States. I would have to go to law school all over again, which as you can imagine, I did not very much want to do. Going back to something else I had good foundation in was another option, and that was Chinese. So I moved, as it happened, to New Haven where Yale University is. I was lucky enough to get into Yale. It had one of the best programs in Chinese history in US. So it was a series of lucky chances that really got me there.

R: I noticed that you have been focused on three topics throughout your academic career, which are Western cognition of China, military history of China, and Chinese cuisine history. How did you pick these topics and transfer from one to another?

J: Actually what I started to do was Chinese legal history because I had been a lawyer, and I figured that I understood how the law worked, and it would be interesting to study Chinese law. So my PhD dissertation was on Chinese legal history of the Qing Period. After that I started to study both military history and China in the west, because I was interested in the fact that Jesuit missionaries had been helping Emperors make cannon and draw maps and fight in the wars. In addition, I became fascinated by the interrelationship of legal and military approaches to governance.

However, from military to food was another jump. First of all, I think as a historian you have to try to think ahead to what’s going to the next big field. One of the things that I thought was going to be a big field was the daily lives. One day I was reading an extremely difficult Chinese text from the 18th century about a war, and I could not understand it, so I was sort of annoyed by it. I got up and ate lunch that I made that morning, and I was sitting there, eating, and reading, thinking what it means. Then I realized that the text said “this is what we should feed our troops. We should give them rice noodles, because to cook rice noodles you simply have to soften them in water, you don’t have to light a fire. And if you do not light a fire, then you do not give away your position to the enemy on the other hill side. So it is for security that they’d better eat rice noodles.” Then I realized that that was what I had done that morning. I was actually eating rice noodles that were soaked in water earlier. It was a big moment for me. I thought, “this is what I should do, studying the history of food in China, which nobody has done for the last thirty years. It will be such fun and so interesting to do!” About a week after that, I was in a museum where I saw these beautiful paintings of food. I thought it was an interesting way to bring different interests together like arts and food. Everything kind of came together all at once.

R: It’s interesting to see that how your personality of being curious makes you sensitive towards something new and small. And your personality not only keeps you make pioneering works in academic field, but also drives you to come to NYUSH. As Dean of Arts and Science, what is the most interesting part of your work?

J: One thing I’m responsible for is Global China Studies. When I became Dean, there was no such major. Then I said, “how can you have a global university in China that does not teach something like this? ”As you said, what I have long been interested in is China’s relation with the west and other parts of the world. So what I defined as Global China Studies was China in the world and the world in China, which seems to me relevant historically, but also in the present. In consultation with people at NYU, I figured out what this major should look like and what courses should be for such a major. Somebody said to me, “These are all history classes!” I said, “of course,” but I do think we need more social science courses. In fact we are in the process of hiring people for Social Science in Global China Studies, so I think we will have more studying next year.

R: As I know not a lot NYU Shanghai students consider majoring in either Integrated Humanities or Global China Studies. Does this fact disappoint you?

J: No. We are encouraging people not to make up their minds about what to major definitively yet. We always knew that more people would want to major in Business and Finance and Economics. My personal view is that you’ll be much better off doing something different before studying Business. If you’re going to do business, that’s wonderful and you’ll do it in your whole life, but you don’t have to major in it now necessarily. You should take the opportunities that you may never have again to explore different things before you are going to particular part. The way the expression of interests in the major turned out is pretty much what we expected when we designed them, except that more people are interested in Interactive Media Arts. And since it does not have many course requirements, it is relatively easy to major in. I think you never know the way life is going to take you, what you are going to end up feeling passionate about. You have to keep an open mind as to what you will end up being interested in. what is instagram spy You never know.

This article was written by Roman Chen. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Ng Meizhi