Research Interests
Business History; Material Culture Studies; Chinese History; Nineteenth-Century U.S. History
Education
Ph.D., History, University of Georgia, 2017
M.A., History, Nankai University, 2009
B.A., History and B.S., Economics, Nankai University, 2006
Current Projects
My current projects explore tea consumption in the post-Revolutionary United States, Chinese tea corporations from the late nineteenth century to the present, the trade and consumption of Chinese Nankeen, and the law of credit instruments in late imperial and Republican China.
Selected Publications
Popular history tells the story of how the tea boycott during the American Revolution caused a transition in American taste from tea to coffee, making the young country a coffee-drinking nation. In truth, Americans did not give up their tea so easily, and the United States grew to be the second-largest importer of tea from China. This World in a Teacup is the first book to detail the American tea consumption and trade with China after the American Revolution through the early twentieth century. Diverging from British black tea traditions, U.S. consumers preferred green tea, cultivated a particular taste for Oolong tea, and invented the English Breakfast Tea brand to market Chinese black tea. Placing American tea consumption in the context of trade finance, this book explains how the circulation of credit instruments, such as promissory notes, bills of exchange, and checks, challenged the conventional understanding of China’s economy as a primitive system and how the power structure of American, British, and Chinese tea trade in the credit economy reshaped American tea consumption patterns.
“‘Flying Cash’: Credit Instruments on the Silk Roads (Link to Academia),” in Jefferey Lerner and Yaohua Shi ed., The Silk Roads: From Local Realities to Global Narratives (Oxford, U.K.: Oxbow Books, 2020), 237-264.
“Green Gold and Paper Gold: Seeking Independence through the Chinese-American Tea Trade, 1784-1815 (Link to Academia),” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, no. 1 (2018): 151-191. (Reprinted in Chinese in Nankai shixue, vol. 27, no.1 (2019): 265-306.)
Courses Taught
HIST1502/LBST2102 Chinese Food
HIST 4002/5002 Capitalism in China?
HIST3002 Made in China: Modern Chinese History in Objects (Students’ Online Exhibitions)
HIST2600 U.S.-China Trade in the 19th Century
HIST2201 Modern East Asia
LBST2301 History of the Silk Road
Selected Awards and Fellowships
2024 Project Award, James P. Geiss & Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation
2024 Alvin Achenbaum Travel Grant, Hartman Center, Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
2023 Research Travel Grant, William & Mary Special Collections Research Center
2021 NEH-MHS Long Term Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities & Massachusetts Historical Society
2020 Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society
2018 Outstanding Overseas Students Award, China Scholarship Council
2017 Short-Term Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library
2016 Gilder Lehrman Fellowship, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
2016 Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship, National Museum of American History
2016 Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEARS) Short-Term Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia
2015 Peabody Essex Museum Phillips Library Research Fellowship, Peabody Essex Museum
2014 New England Regional Fellowship, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium
2025 Free Expression & Constructive Dialogue Task Force Mini-Grant, UNC Charlotte
2024 Free Expression & Constructive Dialogue Task Force Mini-Grant, UNC Charlotte
2023 Honors Course Planning Grant, UNC Charlotte
2022 Capitalism Studies Course Development Grant, UNC Charlotte
2021 Frances Lumsden Gwynn Award, UNC Charlotte
2021 Junior Faculty Development Award, UNC Charlotte
2018 Faculty Research Grant, UNC Charlotte
2018 Excellence-in-Research Award, University of Georgia