As a disciple of the late Academician of Academia Sinica (1948) Kung-chuan Hsiao, the author is an indefatigable researcher and literary executor. With twenty singly authored scholarly books (many with multiple editions), eight edited or translated volumes, over one hundred scholarly articles, by his receipt in 2001 Choice’s distinguished list of “Outstanding Academic Titles,” the author ranks as one of admirable research leaders in the rather crowded field of late Imperial and modern Chinese history. The author is recognized for his studies in several different areas. First, he works on several pivotal figures in late Qing and early Republican period, in which reform, revolution, and nationalism flourished in China.—Guo Songtao, Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, and Hu Shi. In particular, the author’s studies in the two extremely significant thinkers Kang and Zhang throw new perspectives on the late Qing and early Republican periods of Chinese thought. The result is a provocative and stimulating analysis of the two thinkers. The author’s command of the sources, his understanding of the intellectual trends, and his careful scholarship have marked him as one of the world’s leading experts on this important topic. Also his published work in English and Chinese has served to bring the two worlds of scholarship closer together. As late Professor Frederic Wakeman, past president of the American Historical Association, writes, “Professor Wong has acquired a mastery of modern Chinese intellectual history that is quite breathtaking.”Second, the author’s study of the Yuanming Yuan imperial garden is the most comprehensive one to date. He used a large number of sources, both archival and secondary, and excellent maps, sketches, plans, and photographs, and he overcomes these potential difficulties admirably. As Professor Laura Hosteler said in her review in the distinguished American Historical Review (June 2002), “Wong brings the gardens and their inhabitants to life.” This is no small achievement for a historian. In a similar vein, the author’s biography of Guo Songtao, by using Guo’s massive diary and other sources, presents the historical figure’s “daily life, ”not only an account of the man’s inner life but also a description of what the routes he traveled and how he traveled. The biography is richer for its lively descriptions of the man and his time that serves well to understand China’s bumpy road to join the rest of the world. Thirdly, the author’s work on historiography is gaining considerable currency among historians and literary scholars across the Taiwan Strait. His book on the historian Chen Yinke is the first of its sort. Indeed, it takes arduous effort to do justice to the complicated personality and his enormous learning. In addition to overcome the difficulties for a pioneering work so admirably, the author also judiciously defends some of Chen’s important arguments with sufficient evidence and reasoning. His Shizhuan tongshuo (On Historiography) and Shixue jiuzhang (Nine Approaches to Historiography) are noted as much by their eloquent reinterpretation of some major Chinese and Western historians and their works as by their refined literary and modern style of Chinese writing. The author is a rare historian with literary talent. He writes with clarity, and his scholarly works are often delightful to read. His early excellent training in Chinese classics provided him with immediate access to the more difficult sources for research.The last but not the least, the author has important findings in early Taiwanese history as well. In his lengthy article published in 1983, he invalidates the revisionist view which questions Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong)’s Ming-loyalism. He powerfully concludes that Zheng was a “revolutionary traditionalist” who “transformed sheer violence into a political movement in an unprecedented way. He politicized the entire region.” Recently, the author extends his research into environmental history. The author has received many distinguished honors, including Exchange Scholar, Committee on Scholarly Communication with PRC, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. (1981-82); “Scholar of the Year Award,” Virginia Social Sciences Association (1993);Virginia Tech Alumni Award of Recognition for Research Excellence (1994); Winner, List of 2% Outstanding Academic Titles, Choice, the publication of Association of American Research Libraries (2001);Professor Emeritus, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (2003-); Honorary Chair Professor, Xiamen University, P.R.C.
