Connecticut College has received a $50,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to support a collaborative, broad-based and multi-faceted initiative that will study, explore, sustain and present the cultural heritage of Yunnan Province in China and the Mekong region of Southeast Asia. The initiative, the Yunnan China/Mekong Project, is directed by Lan-Lan Wang, Connecticut College Professor of Dance.

The Mekong region — one of the most culturally diverse places in the world — includes parts of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and the Yunnan Province of China. The Yunnan China/Mekong Project initiatives will commence with an April, 2004 conference, “Yunnan China: Cultural Connections Along the Mekong,” at Connecticut College.

The conference will launch the project, which is an international effort by Connecticut College, the Smithsonian Institution, and others to develop a series of groundbreaking public programs. The conference will consist of scholarly presentations, documentary screenings of the Mekong region and roundtable discussions to further develop the multi-year project to research, support, and present the extraordinary cultural traditions of the Mekong region, and to connect these traditions to audiences in the U.S. The keystone of the Mekong Project will be a program on the cultures of the Mekong region held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2007, as part of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

The Rockefeller grant will also enable preliminary planning of a proposed national tour of Yunnan ethnic performers and future cultural and academic exchanges in the United States and the Mekong region; and to further Connecticut College’s partnership for the development of the Mekong River Arts Festival. 

The Mekong initiatives are being coordinated by a working group consisting of Connecticut College, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Asia Society, and others.

The Yunnan China/Mekong Project was envisioned through a joint research trip, funded by a planning grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and undertaken in February 2003 by an American delegation to Yunnan Province, China.

Yunnan Province, located in southwestern China, is bordered by Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and is home to a wide variety of ethnic communities.

It is a region steeped in history and diverse in its cultures and ecosystems. Given its location, the Province has experienced China’s rapid social and cultural modernization, as well as the broader change in the Mekong region itself.

The project is significant in attempting to bridge communities that have a history of complex relations. It will also serve to break down numerous traditional boundaries and borders in the academic community to create new ways of thinking and working.