1 A person need not be of Chinese ancestry nor fluent in Chinese to apply. I am neither. I first learned about OYCF and its fellowships in 2007. After consulting the Europa World of Learning (56^th ed., 2006) to get school contact information, I mailed a dozen prospective host schools across China in early January 2008 to introduce myself, explain what I wanted to do, and ask for an invitation letter that I needed before I could apply for a Fellowship. One of the schools emailed me a few weeks later with contact information for the new dean. I wrote to him, but never heard back. Another school, Wuda, mailed an invitation letter to me in late February. I never heard back from the other 10 schools.Google Scholar

2 Almost all Fellows have been full-time professors or advanced doctoral students seeking to become full-time professors. As far as I can tell, I am the first librarian to win a Fellowship.Google Scholar

3 Homepage [English-language version], Wuhan University, http://w3.whu.edu.cn/en/ (last visited Jan. 9, 2010). For two articles by American legal scholars who taught at Wuda earlier in the double aughts, see Pamela N. Phan, Clinical Legal Education in China: In Pursuit of a Culture of Law and a Mission of Social Justice, 8 Yale Hum. Rts. & Dev. L.J. 117 (2005), http://islandia.law.yale.edu/yhrdlj/PDF/Vol%208/phan.pdf (last visited Jan. 9, 2010) and Stephen Alton, The Email Diary of a Fulbrighter, 2 Wesleyan Law. 4 (Spring 2002), http://law.txwes.edu/portals/0/uploads/Summer%202002%20Lawyer.pdf (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

4 Sturgeon, Roy L. Preserving the Past, Preparing for the Future: Modern Chinese Libraries and Librarians hip, 1898–2000s, 14 World Libr. no page (Spring 2004), http://www.worlib.org/vol14no1/sturg_v14n1.shtml (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

5 Law school libraries are a rarity in China. Most law school print collections are housed in main university libraries. But as China grows more affluent and the rule of law gets stronger, separate law school libraries may become commonplace. For a short piece about an unusual academic law library in pre-1949 China, see Yu, Charles Y.S. China's Law Library—Soochow University Law School Library, 34 Law Libr. J. 65 (Mar. 1941). See also Conner, Alison W., The Comparative Law School of China, in Understanding China's Legal System: Essays in Honor of Jerome A. Cohen 210 (C. Stephen Hsu ed., 2003) and China Law Review (1975) (10-volume hardcover reprint of an English-language periodical published from 1922 to 1940 by Soochow University's defunct Comparative Law School of China in Shanghai). For an article about efforts to help build a new Chinese academic law library's English-language print collection, see Phillips, Kara, Shanghai Express: Donating and Shipping Law Books Overseas, LLRX.com, June 25, 2007, http://www.llrx.com/features/shanghaiexpress.htm (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

6 I do not know exactly how many volumes or titles comprise the collection. I saw it during a brief building tour on December 10, 2008. It occupied the better part of one floor and had treaty compilations, casebooks, treatises, monographs, and periodicals. Also, the library is a United Nations Depositary Library and subscribes to HeinOnline, LexisNexis, and Westlaw.Google Scholar

7 National Key Disciplines [English-language version], Wuhan University, http://w3.whu.edu.cn/en/research/lab.htm (last visited Jan. 9, 2010). In this respect, Wuda is like Columbia Law School. Best Law Schools Specialty Rankings: International Law, U.S. News & World Report 2009, http://gradschools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/international-law (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

8 They told me, among other things, that legal research had never been taught formally at Wuda. They thought it should be, especially foreign and international legal research, given that many if not most of Wuda's 3,000 law students (undergraduate and graduate) specialize in international law. And they hoped my course would help persuade administrators to offer such a course in the future, preferably taught by the law librarian.Google Scholar

9 My talk was titled “Why Legal Research is the Most Important Skill You Can Learn in Law School (and How It Will Make You Sexier!).”Google Scholar

10 The only free website I could not access in Wuhan that I had planned to assign to students was that of the United States Courts (http://www.uscourts.gov/). I tried to access it multiple times, but it was always blocked. Why? I am unsure. It does not appear to have content criticizing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or government, which is why some foreign websites are blocked in China by the “Great Firewall” (as it is known outside China) or “Golden Shield” (as it is known inside China). Unsurprisingly, I had to discard a research exercise question I use at Touro involving international human rights—a sensitive but not taboo subject in China. Many websites of leading organizations, such as Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org/) and Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/), are blocked in China because they have content criticizing the CCP. Surprisingly, however, I could not access OYCF's website (http://www.oycf.org/oycfold/httpdocs/index.html) when I was in Wuhan. Why? Again, I am unsure. It does not appear to be critical of the CCP. [An OYCF contact later told me that its website had been blocked in China for two years: testament to the Great Firewall or Golden Shield's failure to distinguish “good” from “bad” websites.] In my first two classes at Wuda I passed around to students a sign-up list for OYCF's free online bilingual journal Perspectives. Sixty-five students signed up. I told them they might have difficulty accessing it there because I could not access it. No mention was made by me or them of proxy servers or other means to circumvent Internet restrictions in China.Google Scholar

11 Law is an undergraduate as well as a graduate field of study in China. Wuda has around 2,000 undergraduate and 1,000 graduate law students. For recent articles on mainland China's fast evolving legal education system, see Haifeng, Zhao& Xiaodan, Wu, Exploration of New Legal Education Methods in China, IN The Reception and Transmission of Civil Procedural Law in the Global Society 49 (Masahisa Deguchi & Marcel Storme eds., 2008); Keyuan, Zou, Professionalising Legal Education, in China's Legal Reform: Towards the Rule of Law 203 (2006); Li, Liu, Should Law Educational System Change?, China Daily, Oct. 10, 2006, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2006-10/10/content_704340.htm (last visited Jan. 9, 2010); Abramson, Kara, Paradigms in the Cultivation of China's Future Legal Elite: A Case Study of Legal Education in Western China, 7 Asian-Pac. L. & Pol'y J. 302 (2006), http://www.hawaii.edu/aplpj/articles/APLPJ_07.2_abramson.pdf (last visited Jan. 9, 2010); and O'Brien, Roderick, Changes in Legal Education in China, MRI Forum 16, July 20, 2005, http://www.riccimac.org/eng/mriforum/16.htm (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

Interestingly, two foreign-inspired law schools opened in opposite parts of China in late 2008: the China-European Union School of Law (north, Beijing) and the Peking University School of Transnational Law (south, Shenzhen). The former focuses on comparative and international law while the latter focuses on American common law. See generally Homepage [English-language version], China-EU School of Law, http://www.cesl.edu.cn/eng/index.asp (last visited Jan. 9, 2010) and Homepage [English-language version], Peking University School of Transnational Law, http://www.stl.szpku.edu.cn/en/ (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

12 Chinese university students, particularly undergraduates, are extremely shy when it comes to speaking in class. They are usually not encouraged to do so because it could be viewed as challenging authority. It is a cultural thing. See Alton, supra note 3, at 8 and French, Howard W. China Luring Foreign Scholars to Make Its Universities Great, N.Y. Times, Oct. 28, 2005, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03ElDBlE3FF93BA15753ClA9639C8B63 (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

13 Homepage, GPO Access, http://www.gpoaccess.gov/ (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

14 And I am sure this is why only three students submitted research exercise 1 to me, which was due today. I read them. They were good, but I ended up not grading them.Google Scholar

15 I hope they were clapping for me and not the law school choir practicing next door, although it was good.Google Scholar

16 The PRC has had four constitutions: 1954, 1975, 1978, and 1982. Daniel C.K. Chow, The Legal System of the People's Republic of China in a Nutshell 71–75 (2d ed. 2009).Google Scholar

17 The Conference had been planned for several years. I was appointed to the Translation and Publication Committee in 2008.Google Scholar

18 Short for “The West Education Network,” an online course management tool widely used by American law professors.Google Scholar

19 If you are curious to see what is there, then go to Gmail (http://gmail.google.com/) and sign in with username “wuda.seminar” and password “empower2009.”Google Scholar

20 I was born in 1970: year of the dog. “People born in the Year of the Dog possess the best traits of human nature. They have a deep sense of loyalty, are honest, and inspire other people's confidence because they know how to keep secrets … Dog people make good leaders.” Year of the Dog, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/zodiac/dog.html (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

21 Homepage (English-language version], 12 Girls Band, http://www.12girls.org/english/index.asp (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

22 Time expired before we could get to the third and final question.Google Scholar

23 I wanted to show them The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18^th ed., 2005) as well, but we lacked access to it in print and digitally.Google Scholar

24 Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, (formerly Canton) overshadow Wuhan. They are more populous, on or near the Pacific coast, and have been the backdrop for many important events in modern Chinese history. But Wuhan has also seen its share of important events. The 1911 uprising that toppled the last imperial dynasty started there. See generally Edwin J. Dingle, China's Revolution 1911–1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War (1912). It served as China's capital for one year (1938) during World War II. See generally Stephen R. MacKinnon, Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China (2008). And a septuagenarian Mao Zedong reportedly swam nine miles in 65 minutes in the Yangzi River at Wuhan on July 16, 1966, to show that he was still physically fit and in control of China. See Richard H. Solomon, The Chairman's Historic Swim, TIME Asia, Sep. 27, 1999, http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/99/0927/wuhan.html (last visited Jan. 9, 2010); Chairman Mao Swims in the Yangtse, Peking Rev., July 29, 1966, at 3, http://massline.org/PekingReview/PR1966/PR1966–31.pdf (last visited Jan. 9, 2010); and Mao Zedong's 1966 Swim of the Yangtze, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com-/watch?v=xN1P2DHE26g (last visited Jan. 9, 2010).Google Scholar

25 To be fair, Wuda was operating under my time constraints. I could only stay three weeks, which is why I held multiple classes each week. If I return to Wuda and can stay for a full (or even half) semester, then it will be possible—at least on my part—to make sure the course only meets once a week.Google Scholar