Ying Sun

• Visual Culture
• Urban Culture
• Chinese Studies
• Women Aesthetics

• PgCert in Research Practice, Birmingham City University, UK (2019)
• MA Landscape Architecture, Nanjing University of the Art, China (2018)
• MA Landscape Architecture (distinction), Birmingham City University, UK (2017)
• BA Environmental Design, Zhejiang University of Technology, China (2015)

Student member of Landscape Institute, UK (2017– present)

Ying is currently focused on the topic of Chinese square dancing, known as guangchang wu in Chinese, which is a contemporary and strikingly popular practice among middle-aged and older people in China. Square dancing as a daily routine is mainly performed by collective groups, with the essential elements of loud music, paved spaces and groups of dancers.

This timely interdisciplinary activity can be viewed as a unique phenomenon with distinct Chinese characteristics. The primary purpose of her study is to contextually explore the origin of the square-dancing development, especially to study dancing communities by analysing related aspects of social change, emotional needs and political relations.

Moreover, the key findings of the discussion on the definition of square dancing are that square dancing is not only a valuable new mechanism to cultivate nationalist ideology and patriotic sentiment, but it also embodies the shaping, indoctrinating and contesting of national ideological values.

In addition, square dancing can be understood as a demonstration of the significant transformation in body aesthetics for this generation of female dancers from the Mao period to the contemporary era. Finally, the reinterpretation of the concept of the square and the role of square dancing in urban daily life will be demonstrated.

Each chapter is dedicated to the discussion of square dancing, focusing on community, nationalistic dancing body, body aesthetics and the square.

Overall, it is understood that the phenomenon of square dancing has an ever-changing, dynamic path between top-down and bottom-up development; it is regulated by political ideology and cultural identity and thus affects people’s everyday lives.

Conferences Presentations:

• “Seeking the Healthy Ageing in Urban Public Spaces: A Case of Square-Dancing Spaces in China”, presented at the "Spatiality and Temporality" International Conference, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, 12 February 2023
• “The collective culture in China: The Dama’s body art in square dancing”, presented at the “Borders, Cultures, Communities” of PGR Studio Conference, Birmingham City University, 28 October 2022.
• “Telling Chinese Story Well” With Popular Culture: Taking Square Dancing as An Example” presented at the “Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission”, the Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies, University of Leicester, 21-22 July 2022.
• “Cloud Square Dancing under the Influence of Covid-19 pandemic”, presented at the 13th Annual Conference of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) of “The World, Two Metres Away”, Birmingham City University, 9-10 November 2020.
• “Square Dance in Urban Spaces in Contemporary China”, presented at the Alchemies of Research PGR Studio Conference, Birmingham City University, 29 July 2019.

Published Journal Papers

• Sun, Ying, Dong, Mengdi "Reimagining the Female Body: Exploring Through the Contemporary Experimental Films In China", Arts Studies And Criticism, no. 3 (1), (2022): 65-71.
• Sun, Ying. “A Study on the Differentiation and Evolution of Urban Social Spaces in Contemporary China: A Review of ‘Urban Social Space in China‘”, Modern Urban Research (Xiandai Chengshi Yanjiu) (CSSCI), no.11 (2021):131-134.
• Sun, Ying. Weng, Yixi. “The Role of the Landscape Architect in the 21st Century Fight against Climate Change”, International Journal of Liberal Art and Social Science 7, no.10 (2019): 17-35.
• Sun Ying. “The Aesthetics Relationship between Music and Spaces”, Beauty & Times 3, no.743 (2018): 20-21.