The History of the Reception of Byzantine Studies in China

Though Byzantine studies in China could be traced back to the time before the PRC, with introduction and translation of pieces of western works, the formal reception of the field should start from the PRC, when the education system and academics of Soviet Union were introduced into China. The beginning of it was limited in the research on Feudalism, economics and archaeological findings (coins). Since the beginning of the 1980s, with the return of Xu Jialing and Chen Zhiqiang from Greece, systematic research of Byzantine studies was conducted, and education cultivation system including MA, PhD and Postdoc became to be formed at the Northeast Normal University and Nankai University. In the beginning of the first 20 years of the 21st century, Byzantine studies turned to be blooming through more scholars graduated from the above two universities and European universities, especially the intensive cooperations with the scholars and research institutes from Europe and the US in lectures, seminars, cooperative programs and publications contributed more to that. Furthermore, now Chinese Byzantinists not only follow the research trend of the international Byzantine studies, but also try to form their own features in Byzantine studies, such as in Byzantine law, sericulture, coins and Digital Humanities.