Connecticut College China Yunnan/Mekong Project

Project Background

The Connecticut College China Yunnan/Mekong Project was created in 2002 by Lan-Lan Wang, Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance Department, as a response to the need to preserve, present, study and research the minority ethnic cultures of Yunnan Province in China.

Wang was one of the first modern dancers from the West to visit China after the Cultural Revolution in 1978. Her long history of cultural exchanges has been focused on the development of modern dance in China.

In 2000, she led an educational trip including six dance students from Connecticut College to Shanghai and Yunnan Province. Wang and the students traveled throughout the southwest region of Yunnan, including the Honghe Hani and Yi Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, guided by the officials from China Yunnan International Culture Exchange Center and Mr. Tian Feng, founder of Yunnan Ethnic Culture Preservation Institute. This trip prompted the idea of a collaborative project between Yunnan and the United States that would support and preserve the ethnic culture traditions of Yunnan.

In the summer of 2002, another Connecticut College educational event, a border crossing from Vietnam to Yunnan, China funded by the Freeman Foundation, paved the way for the establishment of the China Yunnan/Mekong Project with a planning grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, which set the project in motion.

In March 2003, an American cultural delegation took a research trip to Yunnan Province and attended a conference on the preservation and presentation of ethnic minority cultures. This trip resulted in a working group made up of representatives from the Asia Society, Connecticut College, New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (view the Smithsonian Center's news release.)

The group created a multi-year, broad-based, multi-faceted plan that would initiate collaborations between American institutions and their counterparts in the Mekong River region, and would culminate with the "Mekong River: Crossing Cultures" program at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in 2007. This event will include participation from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Yunnan Province in China.

The Mekong project held two events in 2004 including the conference: “China Yunnan: Culture Connections Along the Mekong,” at Connecticut College in May and a planning meeting in Bangkok, Thailand in October 2004.

Connecticut College is a private liberal arts college known for academic excellence, interdisciplinary studies, innovation in education, international programs, funded internships, and a wide range of student-faculty research opportunities. More than half of the student body studies abroad, including programs in China.

The College has a reputation in the arts and the College is committed to the internationalization of education, and has been recognized by the American Council on Education as a national model.