Author: Ira Hubert 胡安華

     During the 2016-2017 academic year, I am honored to have spent ten months at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History while on a Fulbright grant for American graduate students (U.S. fellows).  My Taipei-based project, A Chameleonic Power: The Republic of China’s Encounter with the Decolonizing World, 1942-1971, has been a component of my dissertation research in the field of diplomatic history.  The overarching theme concerns the quiet advocacy of Nationalist Chinese statesmen at the height of the Cold War.  During that period, representatives of the ROC journeyed to distant capitals in West Asia, Africa, Europe, and beyond in order to normalize relations of states and sub-national groups with the government in Taiwan, an island about which much of the world knew little.  For this project, I have utilized the wealth of archival and library holdings open to foreign researchers in and around Taipei, and regret having to leave it all so soon.      When I arrived here last September, with only a piece of luggage plus a backpack, the first order of business was to quickly find a place to live.  Having lived abroad for significant periods of time before entering graduate school, I can attest that