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 reevaluates his own self-definition as a hyphenated American and sheds new light on human identity’s complex roots in history, geography, and language.

Yi-Fu Tuan is author of Cosmos and Hearth, Dear Colleague, and Space and Place, all from Minnesota. He retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998.

段义孚是享誉世界的美国华裔人文主义地理学大师,在地理学理论、园林建筑、文学、宗教等研究领域都作出过举世瞩目的贡献。他关注人的问题,注重人性、人情,其思想见解发人深省,因而被公认为“拥有超然灵魂之正义之声”。他著作颇丰,代表作品有：《恋地情结：对环境感知、态度和价值观的研究》(Topophilia：A Studh of Environmental Perception,Attitudes ,and Values)、《经验透视中的空间与地方》(Spoce and Plac:The Perspective ofExPerience)、《撕裂的世界与自我：群体生活和个体意识》(Segmented Worlds and self:Group Life andIndividual COILSciousness)、《逃避主义》(Escapism)等等。

他一生荣获众多荣誉,包括美国艺术与科学院院士,英国皇家科学院院士、古根海姆基金奖、美国地理学会授予的地理学杰出贡献奖等等。