A New Sinology Reader was designed by Callum Smith, under the guidance of Geremie R. Barmé, who conceptualised the site and its contents.
The character 讀 dú, ‘to read’ (as well as ‘reading’, ‘look at’, and ‘interpret’), the leitmotif of this site, is in the hand of Li Huailin 李懷琳 of the Tang dynasty. Like 遺 yí, and 書 shū, which feature elsewhere in these interconnected sites, the character 讀 is taken from Li’s grass-script 草書 version of a ‘Letter to Shan Tao’ 與巨山源絕交書, a famous epistle by Xi Kang 嵇康, one of the outspoken Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove 竹林七賢. That letter frames the essay On Heritage 遺, itself a statement about the rationale of the Wairarapa Academy of New Sinology and these websites.
The art work featured on the masthead, a photograph of the eastern side gate 闕左門 leading to Meridian Gate 午門 at the Palace Museum in Beijing, was made by the New York-based photographer Lois Conner, a friend who has collaborated with and contributed generously to the China Heritage Project from its inception in 2005, as well as The China Story Project from 2012. We are grateful for her enthusiastic support for China Heritage from 2016.
New Sinology was first propounded in 2005 and, since then, I have developed the ideas related to this approach to China as part of the China Heritage Project (2005-2012) and as the founding director of the Australian Centre on China in the World (2010-2015). Some of the material herein previously appeared in the e-journal China Heritage Quarterly and The China Story Journal, which I founded with colleagues as part of The China Story Project in 2012.
The China Heritage Project and the Quarterly evolved together as part of an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship, which I held at The Australian National University (ANU) from 2005. Callum Smith’s work on these four new China Heritage websites in 2016 has also been made possible by that grant.
Without long years of support from ANU and the Australian Research Council, my work on New Sinology and China Heritage would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Ian Chubb, Mandy Thomas, Claire Roberts, Bruce Doar, Sang Ye 桑曄, Judith Pabian, Gloria Davies, Jude Shanahan, Daniel Sanderson, Duncan Campbell, John Minford, Lois Conner, Jeremy Goldkorn, Linda Jaivin and Kevin Rudd for their encouragement and contributions to the first ten years of New Sinology.
— Geremie R. Barmé