Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Writing these acknowledgments has been an edifying experience. Until now I have not had to face up to the fact that over the past decade and a half I have importuned and inconvenienced dozens of people who have generously agreed to help me in all kinds of ways. In the course of my researches I have benefited from the unstinting kindness of Annie Chang and her staff at the Center for Chinese Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and the patience of the staff at the Hoover Institute ’s East Asian Collection at Stanford University. Bruce Williams is the ghost in the machine at Berkeley’s East Asiatic Library and has helped me track down all sorts of things over the years. The folks in the Interlibrary Loan Department at Lewis & Clark College have kept me supplied with much that I’ve needed. I owe a great deal to the staff of the Shanghai Municipal Library, the Shanghai Municipal Archives, and the Number Two Archive in Nanjing. Two people in particular helped me get the materials I needed to write this book. They know who they are and I hope they also know how much their efforts have meant to me. In Taipei the staff of the National Historical Archives, the Nationalist Party Archives, the History Institute, and the Bureau of Intelligence Library went out of their way to guide my research and provide me with the materials I needed. I hope these people and their institutions will accept my heartfelt thanks in exchange for all they’ve done for me. Various organizations and foundations have funded my research, and I am happy to have the opportunity to acknowledge them here. A Mellon xv Foundation Grant and a Graduate Humanities Research Grant supported pre-dissertation research in 1991 and 1992. A grant from the Education Department of the Republic of China and a Dissertation Fellowship from the Committee for Scholarly Communication with the PRC funded a year of dissertation research in Shanghai and Nanjing during the 1992–1993 academic year. A semester of junior sabbatical from Lewis & Clark College helped me revise the book manuscript. Thanking all the people who have enriched my life is a delight. My family has been an important touchstone through the years. James Clune shared the many years of school and work that eventually produced this book. I am honored to count him among my friends. John Chaffee is really to blame for getting me started in this profession. He lured me into Chinese History with his course “Mandarins and Samurai,” kept me there with his patience and encouragement, and launched me on my life’s work with the simple words “You could learn Chinese.” Thank you. I owe a great debt to my professors at Berkeley, especially Wen-hsin Yeh, Frederic Wakeman Jr., Irwin Scheiner, Mary Ryan, and Elizabeth Perry. I want to offer special thanks to Wen-hsin, who has continued to inspire me with her intellectual rigor, creativity, and sense of fun. Over the years Susan Mann’s example and kind words have given me great encouragement. I am blessed with friends who understand fun both intellectual and otherwise . Thank you to Lyell Asher and Ben Westervelt for their unparalleled lunchroom conversation, Carlton Benson for his dry humor and willingness to eat ganbian siji dou every night for a year, Annie Chang for her gracious and generous help with long-distance research, Lisa Claypool for turning up all over the place and for turning up some last minute citations, Alan Cole for conversation, Sherry Fowler for general hilarity , especially in the middle of the Taklimakan Desert, Mark Halperin for his friendship, Jane Hunter for her kindness, Susan Kirschner for wonderful dinners, Todd and Christa Little-Seibold for their joie de vivre, Robby and Gary Roy for taking me in and Robby for the endless garage sales, Carol Schrader for advice and listening, Teri Silvio for her humor and her Play-Doh art, and Patty Stranahan for shopping and encouragement . Beth Haiken stands in a class of her own—she made a world of difference. I have been deeply touched by the generosity of those who have taken hours out of their own projects to help me with mine. Lyell, Beth, Carlton , Robby, two anonymous readers for the University of California Press, and Ken Pomeranz, also a reader for the press, read the entire manuscript at one time or another and made invaluable comments. I am gratexvi Acknowledgments [18.117.182...