Coming to Duke Kunshan University has been a revelation for inaugural class student Yin-Chu Lu that has helped her discover new interests and decide on a career path.
Lu threw herself into activities from her first semester at the university, launching a club, organizing a festival, getting involved in research and starting a small business. Now, due to graduate in May, she leaves with offers to study for a master’s degree at several top global academic institutions and ambitions to one day become a scholar of religious studies or anthropology.
“I am a different person now to the one I was in high school,” she says. “I am more motivated, more independent and more willing to pursue the things I really want to do.”
“Back in Taiwan I never thought I would want to study religion or theology, and never knew that I would be able to do art or start a club. These opportunities are what DKU has offered me,” she adds.
Yin-Chu Lu gives a class presentation
Lu, who comes from Taiwan, was no stranger to the Chinese mainland when she arrived at Duke Kunshan to study media and arts in 2018, having spent many summer holidays visiting her father, who worked in the auto industry there. She was attracted by DKU’s academic opportunities, but soon found a wealth of other possibilities at the university too.
“The academic aspect is important and the chance to work closely with professors is very precious,” she says. “But besides this, there are many extra-curricular opportunities at the university as well.”
Majoring in media and arts, with a track in creative practice, she wanted to provide a platform for students to show their work, and helped to launch the university’s first photography club, as well as being its president. The club was responsible for organizing several exhibitions of student photography.
She was heavily involved in launching DKU’s music and arts festival too, which saw bands, exhibitions, discussions and workshops come to the expanding campus grounds.
Yin- Chu Lu (far left) with classmates
Lu also threw herself into entrepreneurship while at DKU, entering a national business plan competition, and launching a marketing company with a friend, aimed at helping local enterprises. Duke Kunshan’s Innovation Center has an incubator fund that can help student start-ups financially and also provides a mentorship service. While the business was not a major success, it was nevertheless a “good experience,” she says, and taught her important life lessons.
It was research though that most helped Lu develop a vision for her future. Because of the university’s focus on interdisciplinary study, she was able to join an ethnographic research project, organized by Keping Wu, associate professor of anthropology. The project involved visiting and recording information about temples in the countryside around Kunshan that were due to be demolished and relocated to make way for urbanization. Lu and other team members mapped their locations, took photographs and interviewed temple managers, using the information to produce an online archive.
“It was the first time I had ridden a scooter,” she says. “Every day we rode out to these very remote places in Kunshan and interacted with people from all different backgrounds. We would spend all afternoon together and I developed close friendships with my fellow researchers,” she adds.
That experience, as well as working with humanities professor James Miller on environmental ethics research, led to her developing an interest in theology and religious studies, a departure from her original major.
“The professors I worked with influenced me a lot,” she says. “It’s because of my interaction with them and their research, as well as encouragement, that I decided on the future course that I did.”
Yin-Chu Lu (second from left) with classmates and Daoists outside a temple near Kunshan during her ethnographic research project
Lu has offers to study at several world-class academic institutions, including the University of Cambridge, Yale University and Harvard University, but is still undecided about where she will go. Once she completes her postgraduate studies, she hopes to eventually become a scholar of religious studies or anthropology, potentially back in China, as well as making documentaries, a passion she developed through her undergraduate major.
“The past four years at DKU have been the most transformative period of my life so far,” she says. “Every individual I met at DKU, whether faculty, staff, or student, is incredibly friendly, caring, and inspiring.”
For new students about to start at DKU, or those aspiring to join the university, she has this advice. “If I could travel back in time to my freshmen year, I would tell myself that it is okay to fail, it is okay to be introverted, it is okay if you sometimes feel that you don’t fit in,” she says.
“Try to embrace the uncertainties and surprises along the journey and keep working hard. Ultimately, you will find your way of life. You will meet a fantastic group of people who are there to support you. So, take it easy, be bold, be open-minded, and enjoy life.”
