The Tireless Bridge Builder
The author is professor of politics at East China Normal University, Shanghai
Born in Wuhan in central China in 1947, Professor Hsiang-te Kung is a 75th-generation descendant of Confucius. Shortly after he was born, his father left for Taiwan to help revive the sugar industries abandoned following Japan’s defeat in World War II. He and his mother and brothers followed soon after. Changes in relations across the Taiwan Straits subsequently made it impractical for him to return to the mainland.
In 1969, he left Taiwan for doctoral studies in the U.S., eventually settling as a professor of geography at the University of Memphis
