Patricia Yu (1st from left) visits the National Library of China during the 2016 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

My advisor at Berkeley, Professor Pat Berger, emphasizes the importance of object-based learning. Before teaching at Berkeley, she was the curator of Chinese art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Here is a porcelain workshop that she led last year; we closely examined Chinese porcelain from the Neolithic to the end of the Qing dynasty. We not only learned about the chemical processes and materials of Chinese ceramic technology, we learned how the objects themselves testified to China's technological accomplishments and the role of international cross-cultural exchange in the development of ceramic forms.

As a graduate student at Berkeley, I also have the privilege of access to the Chinese painting collection at the Berkeley Art Museum. The museum has just re-opened in a brand-new space by the university; it now includes a study center for Chinese painting, named after professor emeritus James Cahill, who also collected paintings and donated them to the school for researchers to use. My advisor is one of his students, and I am honored to be in the same academic lineage as Prof Cahill.

The Cahill study center gives me an opportunity to learn about Chinese painting culture through actual artifacts and close looking. This picture is from earlier this year: That's me with my advisor and some visiting scholars, including a specialist in Yixing ceramics from the Palace Museum, Yu Fuchun. On the table in front of us is a Ming hand scroll, depicting the expulsion of demons from the mountains. If you look closely, you can see that the lovely ladies are actually demons in disguise.