< Back to Publications

Coming Home to China Yi-Fu Tuan bookYi-Fu Tuan. "Coming Home to China." 2007, Univ of Minnesota Press.

Back cover text:

"In the summer of 2005, distinguished geographer Yi-Fu Tuan ventured to China to speak at an international architectural conference, returning for the first time to the place he had left as a child sixty-four years before. He traveled from Beijing to Shanghai, addressing college audiences, floating down the Yangtze River on a riverboat, and visiting his former home in Chongqing.

In this enchanting volume, Tuan's childhood memories and musings on the places encountered during this homecoming are interspersed with new lectures, engaging overarching principles of human geography as well as the changing Chinese landscape. Throughout, Tuan's interactions with his hosts, with his colleague's children, and even with a garrulous tour guide offer insights into one who has spent his life studying place, culture, and self. At the beginning of his trip, Tuan wondered if he would be a stranger among people who looked like him. By its end, he revaluates his own self-definition as a hyphenated American and sheds new lights on human identity's complex roots in history, geography, and language."

 

 

 

All text and essays on this site © Yi-Fu Tuan. Published irregularly. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use, How to Cite.
home Subscribe to Dear Colleague letters Publications and Research Dear Colleague