A Scholar’s Journey from Cambridge to California: Uncovering UC San Diego’s East Asia Collection

Story by:

• Nikki Kolupailo- [email protected]

Published Date

Claire also discovered an unexpected gem in the Library's holdings: "The Last Level," an early 2000s film directed by Wang Jing that follows a working-class young man, presumably in his late twenties or thirties, who becomes addicted to an online role-playing game and increasingly blurs his offline life with the virtual world. "Not only does the work provide a distinctive portrait of gaming masculinity, still relatively rare in Chinese screen cultures at the onset of the 21st century, it also adopts experimental filming techniques that attempt to capture the merging of the 'real' with the 'virtual,' which would become a recurrent trope in later popular culture," Claire said. "Though not directly related to my dissertation focus on the Northeast, the film introduces fresh perspectives for my broader research on masculinities in post-reform China."

The complementary collections of UC San Diego and Cambridge University Library stood out to Claire, offering unique opportunities to explore East Asian materials across formats and historical periods. "UC San Diego's holdings are strong in contemporary Chinese studies, with offline and online archives of films from the 1980s onward, many of which are rarely accessible elsewhere," Claire said. "I also benefited from the extensive Anglophone and Chinese secondary scholarship housed at Geisel Library. These resources informed and reshaped parts of my project."

Reflecting on the impact of the program, Claire expressed her gratitude: "I would like to extend my thanks to the Avery-Tsui Foundation for supporting this wonderful exchange program. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my PhD studies, offering both academic inspiration and the valuable opportunity to connect with the academic community in the United States." She also looks forward to sharing her findings at Cambridge, "The materials and insights I gathered at UC San Diego will contribute to my dissertation and to ongoing discussions with professors and fellow students."

Outside of research, Claire enjoyed exploring San Diego's diverse neighborhoods and cuisine, particularly the fresh seafood and tacos. She also visited the campus's iconic Fallen Starinstallation by Do Ho Suh. Reflecting on the experience, she said, "Coming from an immigrant family, the sense of disorientation and uprootedness captured in Do Ho Suh's installation awakened my memories of moving to a foreign country as a child and resonated closely with my own experiences of floating between cultures."

Summing up her visit, Claire chose three words to describe her experience: exciting, informative and inviting.

The exchange program is part of the WongAvery East Asian Collections Collaboration between Cambridge University Libraries and UC San Diego Library, which fosters international research and engagement with distinctive East Asian materials held by both institutions. Earlier this year, Cambridge University Libraryand Trinity Hall, Cambridge, welcomed UC San Diego scholar Emma Laube, who used Cambridge's vast Chinese Collectionsto explore the relationship between visual culture and religion in late 19th century-early 20th century Shanghai. Learn more about Emma's experience in "Encountering the Chinese Collections."

Topics covered:

• Library

Share This: