Professor Bell Yung will give a talk as part of Asian Studies Center's Asia Over Lunch series on Thursday, February 3, 2011. The talk takes place at noon in room 4130 of Wesley W. Posvar Hall and is open to the public. Particpants are encouraged to bring a bag lunch. About the prensentation, Yung says,

"In 1975 Hong Kong, I had a fortuitous encounter with the last of China’s professional blind singers and recorded 40 hours of his music and 10 hours of our conversation. I first reported on the project at Pitt 30 years ago. Now, after ten publications, I can share images and recording excerpts that no print publication can express with technology that did not exist at that time. The singer Dou Wun was born in 1910 near Guangzhou, became blind at 3 months, went to Hong Kong at age 16, and sang professionally until he died in 1979. He told of his singing in teahouses, brothels, opium dens, private homes, semi-public clubs, and eventually on radio. When his art was no longer in demand, he sang on street corners as a beggar, until one day when he was “discovered” by a young generation of cultural progressives, and sang sporadically in concert halls, museums, churches, and the Goethe Institute, as a quaint cultural relic. My presentation is as much about him as our chance meeting and my ethnography."

For more information about this event, please contact the Asian Studies Center at 412-648-7370.