Dr. Hanchao Lu received his PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles and joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 1994. A specialist in modern East Asian history, Lu has published widely in leading journals in both English and Chinese. He is the author of three award-winning books: Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 1999/2004), Street Criers: A Cultural History of Chinese Beggars (Stanford University Press, 2005), and The Birth of A Republic: Francis Stafford’s Photographs of China’s 1911 Revolution and Beyond (University of Washington, 2010). His publications also include Modernity and Cultural Identity in Taiwan (World Scientific, 2001), A Man of Two Worlds: The Life of Sir Robert Hart, 1835-1911 (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 2009), and Pathmakers: Conversations with Renowned Historians(Peking University Press, 2015). His works have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Spanish. Lu is the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal, Chinese Historical Review, and the editor of a sixteen-volume series, The Culture and Customs of Asia (ABC-Clio). He served as the president of Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS) and was the director of graduate studies for GT’s School of History and Sociology. Lu was the William Bentinck-Smith Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and a visiting fellow of the East Asian Institute in Singapore. He has been an honorary Senior Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences since 1995. Currently, Dr. Hanchao Lu is a full-time professor and the Chair of the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech.
Why I Write
“As a college professor writing is part of my job. But I won’t say that the academic imperative to “publish or perish” is what drives me to write. Rather, I find writing to be one of the most fulfilling things in life. Fundamentally, writing involves two things: releasing yourself and influencing others. Although few writers (academics in particular) can touch the lives of millions by what they write and most of what we write will probably soon be forgotten, I tend to think that writing in general is among the most enduring creations of man, outliving even monumental works of architecture. If one day the Great Wall crumbles to dust, Shima Qian’s Shiji will still survive.”