In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r 1 5  China Revisited “Ping Pong diplomacy”caught the world’s attention in April 1971 when the Chinese government gave a warm reception to the U.S. ping pong team, an unmistakable sign that Sino-American relationships were improving. Within a year, two historic events happened: China was granted a seat on the United Nations Security Council in October 1971, and President Richard Nixon visited China in February 1972. Also, with the Shanghai Communiqué, the United States and China normalized diplomatic relationships after twenty-two years of hostility. To overseas Chinese, these developments were especially significant. Yee was teaching in Hawaii in the summer of 1971 when President Nixon made a dramatic announcement that he planned to visit China before the following May. That evening, Yee wrote a letter to Whitehill, declaring, “I just heard that Nixon will visit China (mainland) soon. What a new development? I feel cut off here.”1 Retirement offered Yee some level of freedom. He wanted to continue teaching Chinese art and poetry, and there was an offer by a university in Singapore, but he turned it down because he wanted to stay in either New York or Washington, D.C. The Chinese University of Hong Kong invited him to be a visiting scholar for the 1971–1972 academic year. He accepted the offer but only for the spring semester of 1972 since his Japan book would be released soon. In September, he was extremely disappointed to learn that the book was not on Norton’s schedule for release during the Christmas season. This meant that he could have spent the entire year teaching in Hong Kong; it cost him $8,000 to miss the semester. He spent Christmas with Chien-fei, Chien-kuo, and their families. Yiau-min went to New York to spend one night with him on New Year’s Eve. Since January 1 was Yiau-min’s birthday, Yee arranged to go to a show with her. A couple days later, he left for Hong Kong. Known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” Hong Kong was world famous for its hybrid culture. Ever since the Chinese government ceded Hong Kong to Britain after the Opium War in 1842, Eastern and Western cultures conversed, clashed, and converged in the region. In the 1950s and 1960s, geopolitics brought economic 239 chiang yee 240 prosperity to the region, which was Chinese territory but occupied by a British authority. Owing to its unique cultural and economic tradition and geographic location, Hong Kong acquired a dual aspect: both home and away from home. Being so close to his homeland stirred up intense emotions in Yee. He wrote about his yearning for home in the following dayou poem: I have been talking about returning home year after year, And the fragrance of the harbor greets me before I reach my home. In the distance I can see white clouds, unchanged as before, And there underneath those white clouds stands the Chiang Village.2 Everything in Hong Kong—seafood, vegetables, tea, temples, festivals, and even mountain climbing—evoked cultural memories and the taste of home, which were strangely tantalizing. “I have been absent from China for forty years; / Does China still remember the Silent Traveller?”3 During his stay in Hong Kong, there was a lot of discussion, both public and private, about Nixon’s visit to China and the Sino-American relationship. He met some of his Columbia students who stopped to see him on their way to China. In May, highly acclaimed abstract artist Zhao Wuji delivered a lecture on modern art and gave art demonstrations at the Institute of Chinese Studies. He had recently returned from a trip to China, and, like Yee, he had been stranded overseas since 1948 when he left China to study art in France. For the past thirty-eight years, Yee had always taught in English outside China. The opportunity to teach in Chinese at the Institute of Chinese Studies was incredibly appealing to him, but it soon proved to be a “rather strenuous” task because many terms in art came more naturally in English. He often had to search for a proper Chinese rendition in his lectures. In addition, his students were not able to converse with him. Even though they could understand his Mandarin, he could not comprehend their Cantonese, the most popular southern dialect in the region. He felt so frustrated that he even began to wonder if his...

Share