In the first decades of the 20th century, Jewish thinkers responded to a cultural crisis in Europe by turning their eyes toward Chinese tradition, their investigations filled with fascination and insights.

Such intellectual curiosity about Chinese culture was satisfied in a similar way at the 50th Confucius Salon on Saturday at the Confucius Institute (CI) at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).

"I have in mind to utilize the CI as a platform for deeper understanding and discussion of Chinese culture, to make it go beyond Chinese language study, to give it some academic flavor and depth," Gu Mingdong, the director of CI at UTD, told China Daily.

As one of the earliest CIs created in the US, CI at UTD began its journey in late 2007 and Gu has been its US director since day one.

"I started the Confucius Salon in 2008 soon after the program was established. It is essentially a forum on Chinese culture," said Gu, who taught at Rhodes College, a private liberal arts school in Memphis, prior to assuming his current position at CI.

In an effort to push the presentation of Chinese culture in CI beyond the typical demonstration and teaching of Tai Chi, calligraphy, and language, Gu said he began the Confucius salon with talks on Chinese classical thinking such as Confucius and Taoism. As time went on, the topics expanded.

Most invited speakers are academic experts in Chinese culture. "We want the discussion to be both interesting and intellectual. We have invited a wide range of academic experts from both China and the US," said Gu.

According to Gu, the Confucius Salon has held lectures roughly six to eight times a year since 2008.

In the October discussion, Xiao Mingwen, an English professor from Nanchang University and PhD student in Tsinghua University, gave a talk entitled China on the Tip of the Tongue, exploring major schools of cuisine and the most popular dishes in China, the commonalities and differences between Chinese and American cuisine cultures, the origin and development of chopsticks, the relationship between geographical features and the way people choose materials and prepare the food.

In another salon talk last year, Howard Goldblatt, a preeminent translator of Chinese literature whose translations played a key role in the awarding of the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature to Chinese author Mo Yan, talked about the rewards and frustrations of being a literary translator and the special relationship between translator and author.

Besides the regular salon, CI at UTD also presents one or two large-scale public lectures on Chinese culture. In addition, in collaboration with other universities and local museums, CI at UTD has organized three international conferences.

"We collected the academic papers presented at the conference and published them in a collection at New York State University," said Gu. "In a way, I want to make CI a Chinese culture study center in North Texas. I think by giving some scholarly weight to our work, it helps to strengthen CI's position in the university."

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com