Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Academic Autobiography"
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| [a] Moonscape RF |
Images of Growth and Productivity in John King Fairbank’s Memoirs
John King Fairbank—known to many in the field of Chinese studies as the organizing genius behind its growth in the United States, and a man who taught for forty years at Harvard, with connections throughout the world—began his life in South Dakota, as a child of the plains. South Dakota is also where he begins his memoirs, very aptly entitled Chinabound. On those pages, he goes so far as to link his Dakota origins to his life’s work in China studies.
It is quite untrue that because I come from the plains of South Dakota I
unconsciously want to fell the trees and level the hills of New
Hampshire.
On the contrary, the waves of
mountains-behind-mountains that one
confronts looking up the Pemigewasset
Valley toward Mount Cardigan
north of Franklin, New Hampshire, have an attraction
that South Dakota
never had. It is
possible, however, that South Dakota helped me get into
Chinese studies just by
being so wide open and unlimited.[1]
Fairbank sets the tone for his memoir by contrasting his South Dakota origins with his career as a Harvard professor of modern China. His statements about his birthplace are sometimes neutral and more often mildly negative, as if to say that “I was born there and not terribly scarred by the experience; nonetheless, I got the hell out.” In fact, he does say something quite similar to that in the preface to Chinabound, where South Dakota is just a line or two of text, rarely to be heard from again. If he was a Dakota boy, it was an early, partial, and highly ambivalent experience. He picked up some basic values, got a good Midwestern education, and high-tailed it out of there. What lasted (as we shall see) is a sense of how growing works in all sorts of spheres within and beyond the prairie soil.
The story I have to tell can be sketched quickly: I grew up in South Dakota
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| [b] Tone RF |
Fairbank sets the tone for his memoir by contrasting his South Dakota origins with his career as a Harvard professor of modern China. His statements about his birthplace are sometimes neutral and more often mildly negative, as if to say that “I was born there and not terribly scarred by the experience; nonetheless, I got the hell out.” In fact, he does say something quite similar to that in the preface to Chinabound, where South Dakota is just a line or two of text, rarely to be heard from again. If he was a Dakota boy, it was an early, partial, and highly ambivalent experience. He picked up some basic values, got a good Midwestern education, and high-tailed it out of there. What lasted (as we shall see) is a sense of how growing works in all sorts of spheres within and beyond the prairie soil.
The story I have to tell can be sketched quickly: I grew up in South Dakota
when it was still a cultural frontier, so I came back east
for education.
From being a student in
five places I learned how to make my way in a
new environment according to its
criteria. By chance I became interested
in specializing on China and during four years there (1932-35) I absorbed
some appreciation
of Chinese motives and principles of conduct.
Later,
teaching history at Harvard (1936-1941), I acquired an image of
China’s
modern revolutionary process.
Going to China again in wartime (1942-43,
1945-46), I got an impression
of the Chinese revolution’s spirit as well as its
appeal and its methods. I became convinced not only that it was one
of the
great revolutions but that it would win out. Back at Harvard (1946-52) I felt
research and
education on China were a national necessity to help the
American public accept
the facts of life in China. I skated
through the
McCarthy era without much damage but was appalled at the size of
the
problem of Sino-American relations, so I joined in the development of
training, research, and publication at Harvard and in the China field
generally.
The rapprochement with China
since 1972 has left us facing many of the
same old problems come round
again. I hope this personal record will
offer
some useful perspective. We are
going to need it.[2]
The narrative in the text of Chinabound moves very quickly away from South Dakota—indeed, relentlessly eastward—and the only references to it in the 450 pages that follow the opening chapter (“How I Became Oriented”) come in the form of visits to Cambridge from cousins and an occasional trip back to Sioux Falls to speak at the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. I have often puzzled over those first few pages in Chinabound, and have, until recently, seen them as bad history. Indeed, Fairbank seems to break two of his own rules for historical writing, both of which are mentioned prominently later in his memoirs.
He begins the story all-too-predictably in his own birthplace, even though he often told students of the narrative power that can be gained by telling a story or shaping an analysis in other, less obvious, ways. It is a memoir, though, and that could be excused, if only he had not made such grand statements about the connection between South Dakota and his subsequent career as a professor and policy maker. Or so I thought. Lately, I have been thinking further about the manner in which Fairbank’s South Dakota origins figure in his account of his life. These posts are meant to examine my new proposition that (as has often been said about life itself) it is all a bit more complicated than it first appears.
Click here for the other posts in this Round and Square series on John King Fairbank's autobiography:
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| [c] Relentlessly eastward RF |
The narrative in the text of Chinabound moves very quickly away from South Dakota—indeed, relentlessly eastward—and the only references to it in the 450 pages that follow the opening chapter (“How I Became Oriented”) come in the form of visits to Cambridge from cousins and an occasional trip back to Sioux Falls to speak at the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. I have often puzzled over those first few pages in Chinabound, and have, until recently, seen them as bad history. Indeed, Fairbank seems to break two of his own rules for historical writing, both of which are mentioned prominently later in his memoirs.
He begins the story all-too-predictably in his own birthplace, even though he often told students of the narrative power that can be gained by telling a story or shaping an analysis in other, less obvious, ways. It is a memoir, though, and that could be excused, if only he had not made such grand statements about the connection between South Dakota and his subsequent career as a professor and policy maker. Or so I thought. Lately, I have been thinking further about the manner in which Fairbank’s South Dakota origins figure in his account of his life. These posts are meant to examine my new proposition that (as has often been said about life itself) it is all a bit more complicated than it first appears.
Click here for the other posts in this Round and Square series on John King Fairbank's autobiography:
Notes
[1] John King Fairbank, Chinabound (New York: Harper Collins, 1983), 3.
[2] Chinabound, 3-4.
[2] Chinabound, 3-4.
Bibliography
Fairbank, John King. Chinabound. New York: Harper Collins, 1983.
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