Due to the many changes over the past two decades, the bilingual courses I now teach at Cornell University and NYU Shanghai differ greatly from the Business Chinese courses I taught at the beginning of my teaching career. Although language instruction is still important, the business component - often informed by knowledge of history and culture - has become central to the course. This book is the culmination of my collection, selection, and editing of video materials over a decade. It reflects a combination of my teaching experiences at three universities and continual deliberation and revision.

Forty years have passed since China started down the road of reform and opening-up. Although many of the trials and tribulations that China has experienced in the past four decades are far beyond the scope of this small book, all of the cases introduced here touch upon important historical aspects and demonstrate different perspectives when "China met the world." My hope is that readers of this book will appreciate the exciting and critical moments when China changed the world and the world changed China, so as to be intellectually more ready to envision the larger challenges that China will inevitably face when it continuously "meets the world." I also hope that the readers all over the world will gain a deeper understanding of Chinese language, history, and business culture through the bilingual resources that follow.


About the Author:

Zhihong Chen is a Research Professor at NYU Shanghai. She is currently holding professorships at both NYU Shanghai and Cornell University. She joined Cornell in 2005 and NYUSH in 2014. She also was Senior Research Fellow at London School of Economics and taught at University of Virginia in 2001-2005. She was trained in three countries and in three different fields: She received her BA in German language and literature from Beijing Foreign Language College, and her first MA in International Studies from Beijing Normal University. She then received her second MA and Dr. Phil. in International History and Sinology from Cologne University in Germany. She also completed an MS. Ed in College Teaching at SIU in the US.