Tree of knowledge offers more than maple leaves

"Back then, we had very limited resources for research. There was no Internet or any database. All we could do was travel back and forth between Tianjin and Beijing to look for materials in the libraries," Yang recalls.

The book was published in 1994, and it remains a must-read for researchers in the field of Canadian history studies.

In 1995, Yang was able to visit Canada as a visiting scholar at the University of Toronto. The 10-month immersion in Canadian society was a precious opportunity for Yang to take a deeper look in person into the country she had been studying for years on paper.

When she came back, Yang developed a series of courses on the history of Canada on different levels for undergraduates and graduate students, and she served as the director of the Center of Canadian Studies at Nankai University.

"Besides teaching my students about Canadian history, I place more emphasis on training them the methodology of history study," Yang says.

Every year at Nankai University, there are always some undergraduate students who choose to continue in the field of Canadian studies under Yang's guidance.

"Yang is the only one who concentrates on the research and teaching the history of Canada wholeheartedly all around the country," says Ding Jianmin, Yang's colleague at Nankai University, who was once a graduate student of Yang.

Yang is the first doctoral supervisor in the Chinese academic field to tutor doctoral students majoring in Canadian History, and she was elected as President of the Association for Canadian Studies in China in 2012.

"Since last July, there have been more than 400 social science academic papers about Canada published. I know some of the authors, but there are a lot of new names among them," Yang says. "I am glad to see that more and more young scholars are gaining an interest in Canadian studies."

Xing Yi contributed to this story.