Qin Fang Ph.D.

• Associate Professor of History

In my spare time, I do calligraphy and Chinese ink painting, not just as a hobby – it is a practice to help me read and analyze historical documents in classical Chinese. I enjoy cooking, making dumpling and sushi in the way I really want them to look. I am not a fan of formality in culture, cooking, painting. I tend to adapt them into my understanding of the world, life, and society.

I love to travel. That’s one of the best parts of my job. I get to go all over the place locating archives, observing local daily life, encountering people that I would never have had the chance to talk with. All these further my understanding of the diversity of cultures both familiar and unfamiliar. I led two group of McDaniel students conducting student-faculty research of iron painting in China (in 2011 and 2015 respectively) funded by ASIANetwork. We interviewed the local community with assistance from student counterparts from Anhui Normal University and Anhui Polytechnic University in Wuhu. I learned “basic” skills – hammering ink painting out of iron on those trips.

In addition, I also led January Term sessions and brought McDaniel students to the Great Wall, Grand Canal, and Yellow Mountain, Suzhou gardens, the Shanghai Tower, etc. We are looking forward to exploring the geography and culture of Taiwan in the near future.

As a historian, the world is my laboratory.