Li Ling: At Home in Homelessness

The last winter issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought(vol. 41, no. 2) about Li Ling's controversial understanding of Confucius as a "homeless dog" ended with a remark that he himself is in many ways homeless in the academic world. Not only does his own love for Chinese culture clash with the pious proponents of the traditional cultural heritage, but in many other ways, he also lingers in the unhomely gray zones of academia. Simultaneously very much at home—but always on the frontier—in a variety of different disciplines such as archeology, paleography, history of thought, philology, philosophy, religion, medicine, and anthropology, he also moves between various niches of learning such as sinology (hanxue, predominantly European), China studies (Zhongguo xue, predominantly American), and national studies (guoxue, predominantly Chinese). The articles translated in this double issue highlight Li Ling's view of how the realities of China fit (and often misfit) into these academic niches.