Talk:John King Fairbank

Name and identification

Changed the format of the Chinese name, as discussed in Joseph Needham. Also changed "Sinologist," as Fairbank specifically did not use the term for himself. ch (talk) 23:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I changed "Sinologist" to "historian of CHina," which seems smoother. True, "Sinologist" is now often used for any scholar of China, but Fairbank wrote in a number of places to distinguish himself from the sinologists of the day who he felt, rightly or wrongly, limited themselves to philology and textual studies. He wrote in the first edition of United States and China (1948), to take but one one example, that the book stressed the work of the new generation of “specialists on China, not because their work is innately superior to that of older European Sinology, by which they have benefitted, but because it is, on the whole, more recent and up-to-date, as well as accessible to the American reader.” [351] Another example is his 1969 Presidential Address to the American Historical Association, where he views sinology, history, social science, and area studies as four separate spheres. ["Assignment for the 1970's: The Study of American-East Asian Relations," American Historical Review 74 (February 1969): 861-879. Reprinted: China Perceived pp. 207-233].ch (talk) 19:21, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Expansion

I expanded, using the books by Evans and Cohen/Goldman, but the article should be further fleshed out. ch (talk) 00:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

費万字 (Fei Wanzi)

I understand that when he was in China, he was an assiduous seeker of knowledge about the Chinese language, to the point where he was dubbed 費万字 (Fei Wanzi), meaning the "ten-thousand character Fei", informally recognizing all of his efforts in learning new characters.

I believe that this is documented in Teddy White's book "The China Hands."

Theodore_H._White

My copy of this book is in a box somewhere in the attic after our move. If someone can verify this, please do so. Bill Jefferys (talk) 04:04, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The reference is from E.J. Kahn's The China Hands ((Penguin: 1976) p. 66 n. 11. After the sentence you quote, Kahn says that one aid in learning Chinese is the use of cards with Chinese on one side and English on the other. JKF in the early 1930s "was almost never seen without a pocketful of cards, and he knew hundreds of characters that most Chinese never used. After a while, Fairbank began using cards that had only Chinese on them, and on spotting an educated Chinese would flash one of them -- bearing, like as not, some obscure word -- and ask what it meant. Among some Chinese, who did not take well to the notion of being beaten by a foreigner at their own game, Fairbank became known as The Terror of Peking, too." Kahn doesn't give a source. ch (talk) 05:27, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction. There's a reference to a book by another author, China Hands in the White article, but the book I was thinking of was his autobiography, In Search of History: A Personal Adventure.. White studied under Fairbank at Harvard before he himself went to China. But I have Kahn's book (again, packed in a box in the attic), so this is where I must have seen it.

Is this worth mentioning in the article proper? Since you have ready access to the source, would you be willing to do this if you think it appropriate? Bill Jefferys (talk) 14:42, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

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