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Home: What We Do
WHO WAS MRS. LIN
Fondly called "Mulaohu" (Mother Tiger) by her students
Fiercely passionate about demystifying the Chinese language for her students in the US and teaching in innovative ways that promoted cultural insight as well as technical skill, Mrs. Lin prepared a generation of path breakers and thought leaders in China Studies and an array of other fields as China and the US established diplomatic relations in 1979. She achieved this by defying social, cultural, and professional barriers; taking educated, expansive risks; and pursuing audacious aspirations.
WHO WE ARE
Former students, colleagues, friends & other supporters
Our “tiger community” includes former students and colleagues who studied and worked with Mrs. Lin from 1966 – 1986, a seminal time in China-U.S. relations. We represent a diverse array of sectors and academic fields, from business, journalism, and law to such academic fields as anthropology, art history, language teaching, literature, history, and political science. Some of us devoted our career to China Studies or China-US relations. Some of us did not.
Our community is diverse in background and views. The Helen T. Lin Initiative is not aligned with any government, political party, or partisan organization.
WHAT WE DO
Engage the "Tiger Community" and broader world
We offer opportunities for intellectual exchange, networking, retrospective reflection, and forward leaning inquiry related to China, China-US relations, and China Studies in the rigorous, mischievous spirit of Mrs. Lin.
We encourage lively exchange, thoughtful discourse, and meaningful reflection and do not endorse any particular views, positions, or policies voiced by members of the Tiger Community or participants in our talks, forums or other channels of online sharing of ideas and experiences.
Upcoming Tiger Event
The Price of Collapse:
Finding the Little Ice Age in Ming China
November 10, 2024 at 1:00:00 AM
Only recently has it become reasonable that historians should include climate in their analyses of the past. In this case, research on grain prices during the Ming dynasty revealed that China was in lock-step with Europe in experiencing what climate historians call the Little Ice Age, extending from the start of the fourteenth century and carrying on, up and down, into the nineteenth. In this Tiger Talk, Tim Brook explains that given our growing understanding of the role of climate in human society, we have to include climate change as a determining variable in the rise and fall of states and societies. While his recent book The Price of Collapse: Finding the Little Ice Age in Ming China is lauded as providing an entirely new approach to the economic and social history of China, Tim considers The Price of Collapse as “not a book I set out to write, but when I found the evidence, I had no choice but to write it.”
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