Chinese Badgers/Badgers in China
Annual spring student workshop
Highlights the stories of both Chinese students at UW-Madison and alumni who have worked in China
Tuesday, April 7, 2026, 4:30 pm, Memorial Library’s Room 126
Student presentations on notable alumni within a dramatic performance, “From Whose Air Do We Draw Breath?”
The 2026 workshop will feature the stories of early Badgers within the context of a 19th-century debate between two Chinese officials over the value of student exchanges with America.
See more details on the upcoming April 7 workshop:
- Facebook event page
- News feature, “Spring student event is a workshop within a play“
Background on this program: Interest in the history of early Chinese students at UW–Madison started with public history classes on the topic taught by Department of History professors Joseph Dennis and Judd Kinzley, which launched the research and collection of materials, working in collaboration with East Asian Librarian Anlin Yang.
This coincided with the work of Genetics Professor Jerry Yin, former Wisconsin China Resource faculty director, to connect with the archivist at Tsinghua University in Beijing and create lists of students sent from China to UW-Madison through the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program (established to send students to study in the U.S. as part of the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion in China). From 1909 – 1937, the scholarship program made it possible for almost 1,300 Chinese students to attend universities across the United States. UW–Madison was the fourth-largest overall recipient of Boxer Indemnity students, and the largest among all public universities.
Each spring, Anlin Yang (UW Libraries) and Laurie Dennis (Center for East Asian Studies) now organize a workshop for students to present papers and tell the stories of our amazing Chinese Badgers and Badgers in China. Alum Lihao “Billy” Yuan has also promoted this project through his public history projects in Shanghai.
The Mendota Project
Students have long used the poetic phrase 梦到她, pronounced “meng-dao-ta” and translating to “dreaming of her,” to refer to Lake Mendota, a favorite campus hangout. Through the Mendota Project, the Wisconsin China Initiative seeks to document the rich history between the UW and China through student research projects, print and web publications and more. See the History tab to learn more about this project.
Past major campus events coordinated by the Wisconsin China Resource have included:
- “China and U.S. University Intellectual Property,” a day-long conference on creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and confronting the myths and realities of working with IP in China, was held in Madison on Nov. 13, 2019. Participants included faculty from UW-Madison and China’s Nanjing University, along with Wisconsin lawyers, CEOs and IP experts. The conference follows a related workshop held in Nanjing in May 2019, organized by the UW Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center and the Nanjing University Law School.
The Red Cap Lecture Series on China & Global Economics, 2014-18, funded by Wade and Bev Fetzer, and featuring talks on China’s economy by Stephen Roach (alum and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia), Nicholas Lardy (alum and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics), Yao Yang (alum and dean of the National School of Development at Peking University) and William Overholt (Harvard).- Screening of the PBS documentary “The Chinese Exclusion Act” in 2017 along with a panel discussion with the filmmakers. Attendance of about 200 for this series of events.
- Collaborations with the Chazen Museum of Art to offer student translators for two major art exhibitions (Xu Bing’s “Background Story” in 2016, and “Contemporary Chinese Art” in 2015), and partnering with the School of Human Ecology to bring a 2013 photography exhibit on Sichuan, “Evolving Landscapes,” to campus.
