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.

段義孚是享譽世界的美國華裔人文主義地理學大師，在地理學理論、園林建築、文學、宗教等研究領域都作齣過舉世矚目的貢獻。他關注人的問題，注重人性、人情，其思想見解發人深省，因而被公認為“擁有超然靈魂之正義之聲”。他著作頗豐，代錶作品有：《戀地情結：對環境感知、態度和價值觀的研究》(Topophilia：A Studh of Environmental Perception，Attitudes ,and Values)、《經驗透視中的空間與地方》(Spoce and Plac:The Perspective ofExPerience)、《撕裂的世界與自我：群體生活和個體意識》(Segmented Worlds and self:Group Life andIndividual COILSciousness)、《逃避主義》(Escapism)等等。

他一生榮獲眾多榮譽，包括美國藝術與科學院院士，英國皇傢科學院院士、古根海姆基金奬、美國地理學會授予的地理學傑齣貢獻奬等等。