Q&A with Jing Wang, incoming assistant professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Media. Jing will be joining the School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Fall 2023.
Hometown: Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China
I come from Zhejiang Province in Southeast China. My hometown is called Ningbo, literally meaning “calm waves.” From its name, you can probably tell it’s a coastal city. In fact, it’s one of the most important port cities in China with a long history of maritime trade and cultural exchanges. It was one of China’s first port cities open to foreign trade after the First Opium War (1840-42). It currently holds the second-largest port in China for import and export. Besides commerce and trade, Ningbo is also a multicultural city with many cultural sites and religious traditions. In my own family, my grandmothers are devout Buddhists, and my god-grandmother is a pious Christian. In retrospect, I realize this deep connection to my hometown profoundly influences me. The cosmopolitan history of Ningbo makes me very curious about the outside world from an early age. It teaches me to be both locally grounded and globally oriented.