Coming Home to China

<div> <p>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. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>At the beginning of his trip Tuan wondered if he would be a stranger among people who looked like him. By its end he reevaluates his own self-definition as a hyphenated American and sheds new light on human identity's complex roots in history geography and language.</p> <p>Yi-Fu Tuan is author of <i>Cosmos and Hearth Dear Colleague</i> and <i>Space and Place</i> all from Minnesota. He retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998.</p> </div>