This talk is part of the Jonathan Spence Memorial Series 

Event Time

Saturday, June 13, 2026 

Registration

12:30-13:00

Lecture and Q&A

13:00-14:30

Location

Yale Center Beijing 
36th Floor Tower B of IFC Building 8 Jianguomenwai Avenue Chaoyang District, Beijing (Yong'anli Subway Station, Exit C) 

Registration and Fees

Please click “HERE” to register. Please send an email to yalecenterbeijing@yale.edu if there are any problems. If you encounter any payment issues, please attach a screenshot that identifies the issue. 

Ticket: RMB 30 for members of Yale community and Yale or non-Yale students (must submit valid .edu email address to qualify); RMB 60 for regular admission. This price includes canapes.

*The registration fee is non-refundable. Unless due to a force majeure reason, Yale Center Beijing will not refund any part of the registration fee if a participant fails to attend the event.

Walk-ins will not be accepted.

The event will be in Chinese.

Note: Seats are available on a first-come-first-served basis.

The Event

Jonathan Spence PhD ’65, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University, vividly portrayed seventeen-century provincial China through the story of a local women’s attempt to leave her husband in The Death of Woman Wang, a landmark work of microhistory. His distinctive approach has profoundly influenced generations of historians and writers. From Xin Luo, Professor at the Center for Research on Ancient Chinese History at Peking University, who traces the lingering life of a Northern Wei palace woman, to Di Wang, Chair Professor of History at University of Macau, who reconstructs the social world of teahouses in Chengdu, scholars have continued to illuminate broader historical landscapes through the lives of seemingly ordinary individuals.

On June 13, the inaugural lecture of Yale Center Beijing’s Jonathan Spence Memorial Series welcomes Xin Luo and Di Wang. Drawing on their readings of The Death of Woman Wang and their own microhistorical research, they will discuss Spence’s influence on both scholarship and public history, and explore how microhistory can engage, resonate with, and inspire a wider audience.

Speakers

Xin Luo
Professor, Center for Research on Ancient Chinese History, Peking University

Xin Luo is Professor at the Center for Research on Ancient Chinese History at Peking University, specializing in Chinese medieval history and the history of Chinese ancient ethnic groups. His major academic works include studies about Inner Asian and an anthology on medieval marches, and he is also the author of travel literature From Dadu to Shangdu: Rediscovering China in the Ancient Road and nonfiction history The Long Remains of Life: A Northern Wei Palace Maid and Her Times.

Di Wang
Chair Professor of History, University of Macau

Di Wang is a Chair Professor of History at University of Macau. He holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He served as co-editor of the journal Frontiers of History in China from 2009 to 2018. He was President of the Chinese Historians in the United States in 2004 and 2005 and previously served as a Professor of history at Texas A&M University. He has received prestigious research grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), National Humanities Center, and Fulbright. His books, Street Culture in Chengdu (Stanford, 2003) and The Teahouse under Socialism (Cornell, 2018), won the Best Book Award from the Urban History Association in 2005 and 2019, respectively. His works include The Teahouse (Stanford, 2008) and Violence and Order on the Chengdu Plain (Stanford, 2018). He has also published numerous other monographs in Chinese and in English.