Professor Wu's warrior woman
Click to viewIn a last-minute change to my syllabus, I gave a lecture on the paper "Yang Miaozhen: A Woman Warrior in Thirteenth-Century China" by Wu Pei-yi. It went really well -- students liked that I made a connection to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and I myself liked that I connected it to the poetess Li Qingzhao. I also made a brief mention that Professor Wu was an inspiration for the course, which is why I dedicated it to him.
After class, in one of those odd coincidences, I decided to clean out my desk drawer. Under papers, plastic spoons, old cassette tapes and blank DVDs was Professor Wu's business card. I'm admittedly sentimental, but holding the card brought back our nice dinner in New York City, in which he was so kind as to encourage a younger scholar who probably can't even hope to gain Prof. Wu's level of erudition.
I like that he made a Chinese version for the reverse side. I don't know why he has two spellings for his first name. Something to do with dialects?