Read “A New Dimension of Chinese Identity: An Emerging Live House Culture in China”.

Cindy Wang’s lively essay, written for her Spring 2017 Writing as Inquiry (Writing I) class with Dr. Emily Murphy, takes as its object of investigation China’s increasingly popular live house culture. What is happening in this particular community of musicians and their fans–who wear Hanfu and sing about lamb noodles–and how do these happenings relate to larger questions of national identity and globalization? Using theoretical texts from literature and the social sciences, Cindy argues that Chinese live house culture offers a new way of constructing Chinese identity, one that is both local and global. This is precisely the kind of intellectual project we hope our NYU Shanghai students will pursue: What do they encounter within and beyond campus, and how do the theorists they read for our courses help them to better understand these encounters? In “A New Dimension of Chinese Identity: An Emerging Live House Culture in China,” Cindy skillfully addresses these questions on the page.

—Jennifer Tomscha, Associate Director of and Lecturer in the Writing Program