Between the 1950s and the 1980s, Taiwan became a major destination for foreign researchers, particularly those affiliated with United States (US) universities, serving a role as a“laboratory for the study of Chinese society and culture.” The present volume includes the oral histories of Myron Cohen, Burton Pasternak, Edward Friedman, Hill Gates, Stephan Feuchtwang, Stevan Harrell, and David Schak, key scholars who produced pioneering work in China studies based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted within a relatively small archipelago of Taiwanese villages and neighborhoods.

 

There are at least three salient ways that the narratives contained in this oral history volume contribute to understanding Taiwan past and the broader discussion of knowledge production in Asian studies (and in other fields as well). The first is how these personal memories serve as unique and valuable new archival sources for the investigation of Taiwan history during the Cold War. The second is how the research stories contained in this book inform the larger historical evolution of China studies and Asian studies in English language scholarship. Last but not least, the personal narratives contained in this book illuminate the dialectic and dynamic relationships between individual upbringing, education, larger international and sociopolitical circumstances, personal agency/choice, and serendipity in the production of intellectual knowledge about “the other.” 

The stories which follow provide insights into a range of questions and issues: How Taiwan society in the 1960s became imagined as “traditional China” how researchers developed an interest in China; how they saw Taiwan at the time; and how they felt about not being able to go to China. We hope this volume will inspire further re-search and complement other emerging historical studies of the US-Taiwan relationship during the Cold War.