In the spring of 2013, I participated in a wonderful conference organized by the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley called Forms of Exchange: China and the Muslim World. There were lots of great friends there and I made many new ones. My presentation was titled “Textual Contacts, Qur’anic Journeys, and Interpretive Links.” The conference poster was so great I had to share it. The calligraphy is by the wonderful Haji Noor Deen (Mi Guang Jiang).

Also, there is a video of the opening panel, Contemporary Relations between China and the Middle East, available online.

There are some brief opening remarks by Wen-hsin Yeh, Nezar AlSayyad, and Peter Bartu, followed by three presentations.

• Dawn Murphy, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
  Rising Revisionist? China’s Evolving Relations with the Middle East in the post-Cold War Era
• Wang Suolao, Director, Center for Middle East Studies, School of International Studies, Peking University
  China and Islamist Regimes after Arab Spring
• Dru Gladney, Anthropology, Pomona College
  China’s Middle East Pivot: The Past is not Prologue