The digitalchina/harvard website wants your story!

Harvard's digitalchina/harvard conference was held on March 5th and 6th, 1998, featuring a screening of The Opium War, a recent film directed by 74-year-old Chinese director Xie Jin. The film, an account of China's surrender of Hong Kong to Britain spurred by the British opium trade in China, was shown in Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, the date of the handover of Hong Kong.

The website, which can be found at http://cyber.harvard.edu/ChinaDragon/welcome_frames.html, has been designed to inform conference participants, as well as the public, of the matters discussed during the conference; we are currently working on making the site's content available in both English and Chinese. The site includes a discussion board which will facilitate a "virtual dialogue," open to the Web community (i.e. everyone!), on matters including but not limited to: (1) China and the Internet; (2) The history of the Opium War; (3) The "Opium War" film itself; and (4) Chinese students' experiences at Harvard.

That last one, "Chinese students' experiences at Harvard," will be crucial to the development and survival of the site, and the project as a whole. Professor Charles Nesson of the Harvard Law School (and head of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society explains (in part in documents posted at the site) that media centered on education and educational experiences can be used to bridge the Internet gap between China and the United States. We therefore want the digital china/harvard site to incorporate the accounts of members of the Harvard Chinese student community, and deliver those accounts to China via the Internet.

This is where you come in: we need your stories! But... what sort of stories? Well, we're looking for accounts of your experiences at Harvard:

• ... the accounts can deal with educational, social, or other issues which have contributed to your Harvard experience...
• ... the accounts can be analytical or 'creative' (or a combination thereof, of course), personal or removed...
• ... and the accounts needn't just be text! Other media, such as photographs or artwork, are highly encouraged!

What sorts of questions should you think about when creating your story? Here, hopefully, are some helpful ideas:

• When did it first enter you consciousness that you might go Harvard?
• What place in your life did this aspiration hold?
• How did it change your life when you were accepted to Harvard, and made the actual decision to come?
• What did you find to be the biggest challenge upon your arrival at Harvard?
• When, if ever, did you contemplate the possiblity that you might... fail? How did you deal with this? How was this conflict... resolved?
• What has been, to you, the most significant thing you've learned at Harvard? How did this take place?
• What is the message you would most like to send to China?

The site is still in its infancy, but is growing rapidly, and will be in heavy use over the next few weeks as we post the materials generated during the conference. Importantly, we want the site to continue to grow long after the March 5th-6th conference has ended... and to eventually serve as a centerpiece for a strong China/Harvard Internet channel.

If you would like to contribute your story to the digitalchina/harvard website, please email me, Gabriel Meister (the site's webmaster), at meister@law.harvard.edu. Feel free to email me any machine-readable materials: text, scanned artwork, photographs, etc., that pertain to the matters described above. Please remember to include your name and contact info (in case anything is corrupted in transit) in your email, and any other information you think we might need to get your story up on the Web. (And if you can, put "DCH" somewhere in the Subject: header of your email; this will make it easier for us to sort through submitted materials.)

Thanks for reading this...
thanks in advance for your story...

... and welcome to digitalchina/harvard!

March 11, 1998