I FIRST MET the members of the Heidegger Reading Group in a small coffee shop at the social science library of Tsinghua University. It was the second month of my exchange semester in Beijing, and I overheard a group of people speaking about Martin Heidegger — Hǎidé gé ěr in Mandarin — and his major work, Being and Time.
“Excuse me,” I interjected. “Are you talking about Being and Time?”
“Yes, we are,” a balding man who looked to be in his early 40s answered. “We are in a Heidegger reading group.” Most weeks they met in a more intimate space, he elaborated by way of apology for crowding around a table in a campus café, but they were attending a nearby lecture on Immanuel Kant that day.
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