Inside/Outside: The Great Wall of China

Mahjong: Public Conversation Series

Conversations on Contemporary China: David Spindler and Peter Hessler

The Great Wall is arguably China’s most powerful and resonant icon—one referred to in a number of artworks in Mahjong. The finale of the museum’s public conversation series will explore the fascinating history—cultural, political, and military—of this incomparable phenomenon.

David Spindler, a Beijing-based independent historian, began his study of the Great Wall in 1994 while doing graduate work in history at Beijing University; for the last six years he has devoted himself full time to the topic. Spindler and the fascinating findings of his research were the subject of a major profile by Peter Hessler in The New Yorker in 2007. Hessler, a staff writer for The New Yorker, was until recently the magazine’s Beijing correspondent. His critically acclaimed books on China include River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze and Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present. The forthcoming Country Driving uses the automobile as a way to explore the larger economic changes in China; a major part of the book takes place in a village close to the Great Wall.