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Talking Points, Thanksgiving 2016

The Thanksgiving 2016 edition of the USC U.S.-China Institute's newsletter. It looks at giving Thanksgiving a Chinese flavor and includes our comprehensive calendar of China-centered events across North America.
November 23, 2016
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Happy Thanksgiving! 感恩节快乐!

We have much to be thankful for, including the many of you who attend our events, read our newsletter and web magazine, or watch or documentaries and presentations online. We’re grateful for the many partners who aid us in our efforts to inform public discussion about the U.S.-China relationship. Some of these are institutional backers, such as the Freeman Foundation which underwrites our teacher training program, and others are individual donors whose gifts, large and small, make the institute’s work possible. Each of you is essential to our efforts. Thank you.

Some previous Thanksgiving editions of Talking Points have featured Thanksgiving-themed recipes developed by noted Chinese American chefs. If you're still figuring out what to make tomorrow, you may appreciate these suggestions from Sylvia Wu (click here for an article/photos from her 100th birthday), Ming Tsai, and Martin Yan.

Madame Wu and family (Palisades Post) Ming Tsai with his mother, Iris Martin Yan

This year, Eastday, a state-owned Shanghai news website, has come up with a “Thanksgiving with Chinese characteristics menu.” Reporter Bao Yongting writes that the adjustments for Chinese stomachs begin with the bird. The turkey is a monster, she notes, to be filled with various things. Turkeys, though, are hard to come by in China and even though it’s hard to match the fragrance of a roasted turkey, Bao suggests a lemon chicken option with a vegetable stuffing. Pumpkin pie is replaced with pumpkin rice balls shaped like little pumpkins. Instead of cranberry sauce, Bao’s got a hawthorn sauce. Sounds tasty, right? Enjoy these photos and click here to give the recipes a try.

Back in 2011, we noted the rise in turkey consumption in China, including the establishment of a U.S.-style gourmet turkey restaurant in Beijing and the enduring popularity in Taiwan of Chiayi turkey rice (嘉義鶏肉飯). Chiayi turkey rice is still going strong, but Dianping, a restaurant review site, reports that the Beijing restaurant is

no more. China is now America’s second largest export market for turkey. That 2011 Talking Points also noted, however, that Chinese were getting into raising turkeys. Earlier this year an article from the “China Chicken and Egg” website sought to encourage Chinese poultry farmers to raise the birds, arguing that the meat is nutritious, that the profit potential was great, and noting that the Ministry of Agriculture had included it in its “China Spark Program” (星火计划) to modernize agriculture. Most Chinese, though, have yet to taste turkey.

No matter where you are, no matter who you’re with, and certainly no matter what you’re eating, we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving. Please take care and feel free to write to us at uschina@usc.edu, to comment on our Facebook page, or to tweet us @usc_uschina.

Please support the USC U.S.-China Institute with a tax-deductible donation. We are eager to continue our efforts to inform public discussion of the multi-threaded and always changing U.S.-China relationship. We need your help.

Best wishes,

The USC U.S.-China Institute
 -- a program of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
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As our students will soon be taking final exams, we have no events scheduled for the remainder of the term. We encourage you, however, to read recent issues of Talking Points or watch recent USCI events. These include:
 
Talking Points - Election 2016, Republican Platforms, Presidential Debates
The place of China in American politics and American policy toward China: The China Card conference
Environment: Matthew Kahn on Blue Skies over Beijing
Taiwan: Shirley Lin on Taiwan's China Dilemma; Andrew Morris on Fan Yuanyan's 1977 defection to Taiwan
Technology and Business: Duncan Clark on the rise of Alibaba
 
And of course - you may like our short book interviews, our Assignment:China documentary series, and our student-driven web magazine US-China Today.

USC students and scholars may participate in a manuscript review on Dec. 2. Rongdao Lai's Becoming Bodhisattva Citizens: Buddhist Education, Student-Monks, and Citizenship in Republican China (1911-1949) will be discussed. Please click here for more information. Attendees are required to read the manuscript in advance. Sponsored by the USC East Asian Studies Center.

 
California Events
Grey Emperors: Long-term Consequences of the One-Child Policy
November 30, 2016 - 5:15 pm
San Francisco, California
Mei Fong, author of One Child, speaks at the University of San Francisco's Center for Asia Pacific Studies.
 
Election Polling and Democratic Consolidation in Taiwan and Korea
December 1, 2016 - 9 am - 4 pm
Berkeley, California
The Institute for East Asian Studies hosts this conference at UC Berkeley.
 
China's Energy and Environmental Challenges: Fact vs. Fiction, Moving Forward
December 1, 2016 - 4 pm
San Diego, California
Julio Friedmann speaks at this 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego. 
 
 
Film Screening: Stage Sisters
November 26, 2016 - 1:30pm
Washington, D.C.
The Freer|Sackler Museum of Asian Art presents a screening of Stage Sisters.
 
Film Screening: A Better Tomorrow
November 26, 2016 - 4:00pm
Washington, District of Columbia
The Freer|Sackler Museum of Asian Art presents a screening of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow.
 
Violence in East Asian Buddhism
November 29, 2016 - noon
Ann Arbor, Michigan
The University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Jinhua Chen, Professor of East Asian Buddhism, The University of British Columbia.
 
Taiwan's Popular Culture and its Impact on China, East Asia, and Beyond
November 29, 2016 - 4:00pm
New York, New York
The Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute presents a talk by Marc Moskowitz, University of South Carolina as part of their Modern Taiwan Lecture Series.
 
November 29, 2016 - noon
Cambridge, MA
Kobayashi Ryosuke, a visiting scholar of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, will speak.
 
Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists and the Making of Global China
November 29, 2016
Cambridge, MA
Julian Gewirtz will speak at the Harvard Fairbank Asia Center.
 
Fighting the People, Fighting for the People: Insurgent Governance and Conflict Outcomes in China, Malaya, and Vietnam
December 2, 2016 - noon
New Haven, CT
Marc Opper will speak at the Yale University Council for East Asian Studies.
Expanding the Boundaries of Chinese Poetry
December 3, 2016 - 2 pm
New York, NY
Yibing Huang speaks at the China Institute.
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