Beijing Briefing: Coffee and Stroll with a Local Expert

Jeremiah Jenne is an American writer and historian based in Beijing since 2002. He has taught Chinese history and philosophy for nearly 10 years and has written extensively on China for a number of publications including The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly, Journal of Asian Studies, Asia Society, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The World of Chinese. His work can be found in the anthologies China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, The Insider’s Guide to Beijing, and the 2015 collection While We’re Here: China Stories from a Writer’s Colony. He has appeared on Al Jazeera English, NPR, APM Marketplace, Beijing Radio, and the Sinica Podcast. Jeremiah produces and co-hosts the podcast Barbarians at the Gate and is frequently asked to speak on Chinese culture and history to company and school groups. Jeremiah also maintains the popular Chinese history website granitestudio.org.

Misha grew up in a leafy Massachusetts college town and began to study Chinese language and culture during high school. A persistent interest in Sinology culminated in a recent PhD on early Chinese thought and religion from Boston University. His research centred on Han dynasty interpretations of the Daoist classic, the Daodejing, and engaged with historical analysis, theoretical debate, as well as text, commentary, and translation work. More broadly, he is interested in the intersection of Chinese philosophy, religion, and the history of medicine, co-editing "Worms and Parasites in Religion, Culture, and the Body," and authoring essays on topics such as the physicality of mystical experience, and the political application of early conceptions of yin and yang. Residing in Beijing with his filmmaker wife, he takes much inspiration from the vibrant city and works on multiple research projects bridging the ancient and the modern.

W. Chad Futrell has spent almost twenty years studying, conducting research, and working in China and South Korea, including consulting for numerous NGOs. Chad is currently the Executive Director of Student Life at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, where he oversees the Deep Dive mobile learning course, Practical Training Project internship program, and Chinese and English language programs. He was previously the Center Director of the CIEE Study Center at Peking University and Minzu University of China. Before shifting into higher education administration, Chad won several teaching awards for his courses on China’s development and environmental challenges, international relations, government, and business culture. An avid hiker, Chad has led groups to many sections of the "wild" Great Wall, and has designed and led study abroad programs in various places in China including Tibet, the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, rural Guizhou Province, and the border regions of North Korea and Russia. Chad spent his undergraduate years studying Chinese religion and philosophy at UNC-Chapel Hill and University of Sussex before spending several months studying Zen Buddhism at South Korea’s Songgwangsa Temple. He later completed graduate work in Environmental Management, Asian Studies, and Development Sociology at Cornell University, and earned certificates of Advanced Chinese and Korean from Tsinghua and Sogang universities, respectively. His research and language studies were generously supported by Fulbright-Hays, Korea Foundation, and FLAS fellowships, among others.