What is Comparative Sinology? China from Where We Stand brings together powerful, diverse voices to define the boundaries and possibilities of this new field, providing a range of perspectives – insider, outsider and in-between – with China at the center. This exemplifies a new China: progressive, outward-looking, yet reflective. Comparative Sinology studies how China has been studied. In today’s global world of hybrid, hyphenated identities, such studies cannot be confined to how non-Chinese study China. What does it mean to be Chinese? Where does it start? Where does it end? Like the related disciplines of China Studies and National Studies, Comparative Sinology is interdisciplinary. Though the four parts of this book represent Philosophy, Literature, History, and Culture, all articles could fit in at least two of these categories. This book redefines the boundaries of traditional academic study, including the subject position, as it is essential, when trying to understand China and its place in the world today, to look at the place of each one of us. Personal connections may be explicit or implicit; but every author here is passionate and personally connected to the work that he or she does, and to China’s future. The practical and intellectual possibilities of this discipline are vast and varied, and this book offers a potential springboard for such ideas.
