Big Screens, Bigger Data: Reflections on a Lecture Trip to China

November 2025 marked another exciting visit to China, showcasing the work of CASS, including a brand new version of #LancsBox X with a Chinese UI, which will be released in 2026. If there were one metaphor to capture the essence of the trip, it would be this: the screens keep getting bigger. Compared to previous visits, the lecture hall LCDs are physically larger, but more importantly, they represent the scale of ambition and investment in new technologies – a perfect symbol for the growing power of large datasets in corpus linguistics, recently challenged by LLMs.

Plenary lecture at 2nd International Conference on Frontiers of Corpus-based Interdisciplinary

During the visit, I delivered a series of lectures and hands-on workshops on corpus linguistics, covering methodologies and a wide range of applications, particularly in language teaching and data-driven learning (DDL). Participants were engaged, curious and eager to explore new tools and approaches. Students from local universities also expressed interest in studying at Lancaster University through existing dual-degree programs, as well as in exploring new opportunities for the future. A personal highlight of the trip was visiting the incredible Terracotta Army museum and the Emperor’s Palace – the breathtaking scale of thousands of warriors from the past evokes a vivid connection between old and new, lasting and temporary, large and even larger.