Podcasts, Book Talks, and Reviews of A Chinese Reformer in Exile

New Books Network Interview by Li-Ping Chen with Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson 

October 10, 2025

Li-Ping Chen, a visiting scholar at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California, led a substantive interview with Robert Worden and Jane Leung Larson on the East Asian Studies channel of the New Books Network, posted on October 10, 2025. The interview explores how this book came together, from its inception as Worden's B.A. thesis in the late 1960s to its final completion as a collaborative project with four co-authors, beginning in 2011 and ending with publication in 2025. Worden and Larson take the listener through the chapters of the book, the impact of new archival collections in developing the book's narrative. Chen learned about A Chinese Reformer in Exile from Zhongping Chen, a major contributor to this book, who was interviewed on New Books Network in 2024 about his related book, Transpacific Reform and Revolution. 

Northwest China Council and First Saturday PDX, at Reed College, Portland, Oregon: A Chinese Reformer in America with Jane Leung Larson

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Jane Leung Larson returned to her alma mater (Reed, 1967) and the organization she founded in 1980 (Northwest China Council) to talk about Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America. She was introduced by Jeffrey Kinkley, a Chinese literary historian and active in the Northwest China Council. Portland, Oregon was the lead chapter in the Northwest regional division of the United States Association, which had at least 23 chapters. Portland hosted a Western Military Academy school, a branch of Kang Tongbi's women's association, and a Mutual Defense Division (Lianweibu 聯衞部). She explored how Kang mobilized overseas Chinese communities such as Portland to support a constitutional monarchy, modern education, and political reform in China and highlighted the global dimensions of the reform movement and its impact on overseas Chinese communities. A PDF of the PowerPoint presentation with notes, including sources of images and links to relevant chapters of A Chinese Reformer in Exile is available here. 

UCLA East Asian Library Book Talk with Jane Leung Larson

December 4, 2025

Jane Leung Larson introduced A Chinese Reformer in Exile and how the Tom Leung papers expanded our knowledge of Kang Youwei's travels and activities in the United States. The talk was held at the Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA, which holds the papers donated by Louise Leung Larson in the 1980s. UCLA China historian Andrea Goldman commented on how she has used the papers as a teaching tool. A PDF of the PowerPoint presentation with links to the book and to the UCLA documents described can be downloaded here.

MOCA TALKS – A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America: Evans Chan in conversation with Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson

October 30, 2025 

Robert Worden and Jane Leung Larson are in conversation with Evans Chan at the Museum of Chinese in America, New York City. Evans Chan's films and opera on Kang Youwei brought Worden and Larson together to write A Chinese Reformer in Exile. The YouTube podcast is here. 

The Baohuanghui on Mott Street, New York City Chinatown

7-9 Mott St. ca 1905, Detroit Publishing Col, BHH on 4th floor

New York City was a Baohuanghui stronghold from the early days of the organization in the United States.  Mott Street buildings would eventually house the chapter headquarters, its newspaper, an armory, and a school.  Although it's not clear when the chapter was founded, the New-York Tribune of July 17, 1900, page 3 ("Alarm Felt in Chinatown"), gives some evidence that the local association had formed as early as 1899 (most likely after the San Francisco chapter was organized on October 26): 

"A Chinese Reformer in Exile" Published by Brill as Open Access Book

A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911 

By Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson, with Zhongping Chen, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Chen Xuezhang, and Yang Zheng 

Brill (Leiden), 2025

https://brill.com/display/title/70307

Open Access PDF:

https://brill.com/downloadpdf/display/title/70307.pdf

This complex, transnational history was made possible by . . . 

A team of scholars with different perspectives and areas of expertise.

Outside collaboration with local historians, specialists on topics as diverse as trolley lines in Mexico and Chinese currency, descendants of Kang and Baohuanghui members, and those who interacted with this blog, Baohuanghui Scholarship.

A wide variety of primary sources:

•       Government records, Chinese and foreign language newspaper coverage.

•       Personal correspondence, diaries, poems, publications by Kang and others.

•       Baohuanghui records and ephemera, from menus to membership buttons.

Selected Bibliography and Archival Collections on Kang in Exile and the Baohuanghui

This post on Baohuanghui Archives originally written in 2015 is significantly updated by the "Selected Bibliography and Archival Collections" from A Chinese Reformer in Exile, 2025. 

Expanding on the listed archives above, see also: 

Mapping the Baohuanghui

This version of Mapping the Baohuanghui is from A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899–1911 (Brill, January 2025), updated with notes in red showing subsequent corrections after publication.  This table of 232 chapters reflects our efforts to provide the most complete and verified accounting of Baohuanghui locations and activities. Baohuanghui chapters in the Americas, Asia, Australia, the Pacific, Africa, and Europe are organized geographically under the original organizational divisions if these are known, led by the headquarter city, followed by an alphabetical listing of locations and all associated businesses, schools, and newspapers.

Please leave a comment with corrections and additions. 

Also see Play the Baohuanghui Guessing Game for chapters whose Chinese names we haven't been able to link with actual towns or cities. 

Documenting the Chinese and Baohuanghui in Montana: Mark T. Johnson

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The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky

Tracking and Contextualizing Kang Youwei in Exile: A Workshop on Diversifying Primary Sources and Collaboration, Association of Asian Studies, March 2025

Wan Zhaoyuan, Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson

Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson, the primary co-authors of A Chinese Reformer in Exile (Leiden: Brill, 2025), presented a workshop at the Association of Asian Studies, Columbus, Ohio, on March 13, 2025. Kang scholar Wan Zhaoyuan, author of Science and the Confucian Religion of Kang Youwei, led discussion with the audience. 

We illustrated how opening scholarly collaboration beyond academia and incorporating a variety of textural and non-textural primary sources enriches the construction of complex, transnational histories in Asian studies. This methodology allowed our team of six scholars to document and contextualize Kang Youwei’s fifteen years’ exile from China—particularly his extended visits and political activities in North America—and the evolution of the political organization Kang founded in Canada in 1899 to transform China’s autocratic empire into a constitutional monarchy. View the two PowerPoint presentations (in PDF form) by Worden and Larson and Wan's introductory remarks at the links below:

Recent Books on Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui

A number of notable books in English about Kang Youwei and/or the Baohuanghui have been published in recent years. Given the transnational scope of Kang's life and political organization, his wide-ranging creative endeavors and intellectual output, the range of book topics is not surprising. Kang's concerns and the Baohuanghui's impact on Chinese lives and political aspirations, both in China and overseas, resonate today. 

For each book, there is a link to an Open Access excerpt, book review, or online podcast or book talk. 

The Baohuanghui

Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898−1918 by Zhongping Chen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023). Transpacific Reform and Revolution: A Conversation with Zhongping Chen is an interview article by Elisabeth Forster, Made in China Journal: "Zhongping Chen traces the networks in which reformers around Kang Youwei and revolutionaries around Sun Yat-sen operated. Chen focuses mostly on Canada and the United States. . . This is a fascinating study that shows Chinese reformers and revolutionaries of the period in an entirely new, much more pragmatic light. Chen discusses the status Kang and Sun had in their networks and the way these networks operated—from business activities and funding through membership fees, to the lawsuits they levelled against each other, and even assassinations." A recorded interview by Li-Ping Chen with Zhongping Chen is on the New Books Network.