From Sea to Sea: Columbia University and Modern China

Author: Wang Hailong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: The articles included in this book can be summarized into three themes. One is the anecdotes and stories of Chinese scholars who studied abroad at Columbia University in the early 20th century; they played significant roles in both the modern political history and academic history of China. Another is the two world-class scholars at Columbia, Clifford Geertz and Edward Said. The author has worked with these two scholars for many years, and describing them from his perspective is undoubtedly a different view. The third is the author's anthropological insights. The author transitioned from Chinese literature to anthropology, and his anthropological research and teaching career at Columbia have made him constantly forget to explain everything around him in anthropological terminology. The 28 articles in the book shed their face as rigorous academic papers and depict past literati and politicians with a light touch, recounting history in a literary language, making it highly readable.