Even if identity politics, which has proven disruptive in many parts of the world, has not yet fully entered current cultural and socio-political discourses in China, China is not entirely free of it. Since the collision with the European colonial powers in the second half of the 19th century at the latest, China has been striving for a double transformation: the political transformation from a pre-modern, dynastic, archaic society to a modern nation state on the one hand, and the cultural transformation with the strong desire to preserve the traditional Chinese identity, which now needs to be renegotiated, on the other. In the lecture, this search process will be interpreted on the basis of reading experiences of various kinds – literary and pictorial – and its inadequacy will be examined.

Prof. Dr.Hu Chunchun 胡春春 completed his studies of German Language and Literature at Peking University in 1997 and received his PhD from Freie Universität Berlin in 2003. From 2004 to 2021, he was associate professor at the Institute for German and European Studies, and vice director of the Center for German Studies (DFZ) and the Center for Sino-German People-to-People Exchange (CDGKA), Tongji University/Shanghai. Since 2021, he serves as director of the master program of European Studies at Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies (SAGGAS), Shanghai International Studies University (SISU). His main research interests are German studies, German literature of the 20th century, German culture and Sino-German cultural relations. Besides scientific publications, he regularly writes about current developments in Germany and Europe for the press in China and Europe.