Events

Jointly organized by Department of Chinese Studies, and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

ABSTRACT

This presentation argues that the Overseas Chinese medical personnel were central in shaping the global history of biomedicine in China from 1911 to 1970, augmenting existing narratives that center American philanthropists, Japanese colonial medical officers, and patriotic Chinese reformers in shaping biomedicine in China. The talk will draw on two specific case studies of diasporic intervention from Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History. First, the presentation examines how Penang-born and Cambridge-trained Dr Wu Lien-teh made visible globally antipandemic measures in Manchuria in 1911. Second, this talk shows how Singapore-born and Edinburgh-educated Dr Robert Lim successfully relocated the National Defense Medical Center from China to Taiwan in 1948 despite the longstanding challenges posed by the Chinese Civil War. This presentation highlights the essential intersections of expertise, freedoms, and diasporic power in shaping global medicine in China and Taiwan through a critical examination of these two medical encounters between the diaspora and the local Chinese and Taiwanese.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Wayne Soon (PhD Princeton) is Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College. He researches on how international ideas and practices of medicine, institution-building, and diaspora have shaped Chinese East Asia’s interaction with its people and the world in the twentieth century. His book, Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History (Stanford University Press, 2020), tells the global health histories of Chinese East Asia through the lens of diasporic Chinese medical personnel, who were central in introducing new practices of military medicine, blood banking, mobile medicine, and mass medical training to China and Taiwan.

REGISTRATION

No registration is required. To join the talk, please click on the following link: https://nus-sg.zoom.us/j/88247304556?pwd=QzNHdi9WTGF6bXJyZlAwelNmRHRlZz09. Please indicate your complete name to be granted entry into the session.