On June 19 and 26, from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm, Ben Wang, Senior Lecturer on classical Chinese literature and award-winning translator, will lead a special two-session short-course that will explore the poignancy and significance of the mountain in classical Chinese poetry.

The Chinese word for “landscape painting,” 山水画, translates literally as mountain and river painting, a testament to how prominently the mountain features in Chinese art, and how deeply mountain imagery is engrained in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. Pillars that hold up the sky, connecting heaven and earth, mountains have inspired the work of innumerable poets and artists throughout the more than 3,000-year history of Chinese literature.

On June 19 and 26, from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm, Ben Wang, Senior Lecturer on classical Chinese literature and award-winning translator, will lead a special two-session short-course that will explore the poignancy and significance of the mountain in classical Chinese poetry. Participants will join Ben in a close reading of selected poems from some of China’s greatest poetic masters from the ancient Book of Songs, a collection of songs-turned-poems from the Zhou Dynasty (1,100 to 500 B.C.) to the present.

This event is held in conjunction with China Institute’s current exhibition, Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens

Ben Wang is China Institute’s Senior Lecturer in Language and Humanities, Co-Chair of the China Institute Renwen Society, and an instructor of Chinese at the United Nations Language Program. An award-winning published translator, Ben Wang has taught and lectured on the Chinese language, calligraphy, and classical Chinese literature at Yale, Columbia, Barnard, Williams, U.C. Berkeley, the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, ABC Nightline, and the BBC, among other academic and cultural institutions. Ben Wang taught Chinese and translation at Columbia University and New York University between 1969 and 1991.