欢迎光临 huānyíng guānlín (Welcome)!

Hello, everyone!

Since I've already been forewarned that it will take a while to set up my internet, I've decided to write my first post before leaving. You all (hopefully) know that I'm going to China for the year, but you may not know why. 

My Fulbright project is to study Chinese provincial museums. "What are provincial museums," you ask? Well, each of China's 22 provinces* has its own museum. Although the earliest ones were founded at the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and others were established throughout the 1930s and 50s, provincial museums have rapidly developed since the 1990s. With the rise of archaeological discoveries in the late 20th century, this is where those artifacts are housed.

So why study these museums? Well, even though these provinces are all part of the Motherland, they each have distinctive histories and cultures. So how do these government-controlled institutions mediate between local and national identity? How have these museums developed and changed since they were founded? Also, now that the National Museum of China in Beijing is trying to get their hands on each province's top pieces "on loan," how are these institutions going to respond, and how are they going to ensure that they get their cultural relics back? I have no idea, but stay posted and I'll keep you informed!

So the game-plan is this:

September 1st-December 17th: HANGZHOU 

Critical Language Enhancement Award (CLEA--I'll be calling it that) for Mandarin study. I'll be getting whipped into shape by Middlebury's study abroad program. I'm anticipating blood, sweat, tears, and indigestion.

December 18th-late June/early July: XI'AN

My host university is Shaanxi Normal University, where I'll be auditing museum studies courses. Meanwhile, I'm volunteering at Shaanxi History Museum (what I'll be doing, I'm still not sure), which will hopefully help me make connections and gain access to some of their resources, i.e., study their past publications and archives. On the side, I'm hoping to make friends by creating language circles.

July-October 18th: HANGZHOU/CHANGSHA/...?

My last four months I'm going to be doing more fieldwork at other provincial museums. As of now, I've arranged to volunteer at Zhejiang Provincial Museum (Hangzhou) and Hunan Provincial Museum (Changsha). I'll either divide my time between these two places, or arrange to visit additional institutions.

So all of that being said, it's near impossible to predict how things will actually turn out. More likely than not, I will have to adapt my research project to whatever the existing conditions are. Fingers crossed it will all work out!

Below I'm posting a map of China's provinces and their capitals:

Until next time, I wish you all the best! Please keep in touch!

再见 zài jiàn (goodbye)

- Nicole

(known here as 魏宁琪 Wèi Níngqí)

*If you ask the the PRC, however, China has 23 provinces including Taiwan