Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I am deeply grateful to Hill Gates for her incredible generosity and trust. She welcomed me at the Wolf ranch and gave me unique access to her late husband Arthur Wolf’s precious fieldnotes. Our fun conversations have taught me a lot, not just about these materials but also about passion for knowledge. My gratitude also goes to Stevan Harrell, who introduced me to this hidden treasure of fieldnotes, helped me in each and every step of this research, and provided invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I am very grateful to my collaborators and research assistants who contributed to the digitization and analysis of these fieldnotes, Gladys Wang, Lu Zhou, Jose M. Hernandez, Chang Liu, Yanchen Wu, and many others. Several funding agencies supported my research, including the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Rockpile Foundation. Communications with Arthur Wolf’s friends and students, especially Myron Cohen, Huang Chieh-Shan, John Shepherd, and Maria Duryea, shed light on several puzzles in this research. Many colleagues at the University of Washington helped me at various stages of this project, especially Patricia Ebrey, Ben Marwick, Madeleine Yue Dong, Ann Anagnost, and James Lin. When I finally visited Taiwan in September 2023, Mr. Wong Min-Liang – the son of Arthur Wolf’s good friend Wang Shiqing, academic colleagues from various institutions, as well as former villagers at Xia Xizhou – some of them participated in the original fieldwork – all welcomed me with open arms. I really appreciate their hospitality, help, and kindness.

I must extend my gratitude to my editor Michael Lambek and to Charles Stafford who introduced me to Cambridge University Press. I must also acknowledge my great intellectual debt to Pascal Boyer and James Wertsch at Washington University and Xiaojun Zhang at Tsinghua University, who always answered my questions with patience and guided me with kindness. In the past years while I was juggling between work and family and navigating a precarious academic system, lovely friends from all over the world gave me much-needed support. My very special thanks to Yang Zhan, Ming Xue, Chunyan Su, Chaoxiong Zhang, Helina Solomon-Woldekiros, Mary Wertsch, Bambi Chapin, and Lihong Shi. Finally, much love to my husband, my son, and my parents. Through them and with them I came to understand what really matters.