Cultural Re-adaptation Of The Chinese Returnees Of American Boxer Indemnity Seholarship Program

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to those "Scholarly Giants" during Republican era of China and they were praised as role models among Chinese intellectuals because of their achievements in academic research and character as men of integrity. Quite a number of them such as Hu Shi, Mei Yiqi, Feng Youlan, Zhao Yuanren and Liang Sicheng were all beneficiaries of American Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program (ABISP). ABISP was one of the earliest scholarship programs initiated by American government for Chinese students to support their foreign education in America. The question of how the ABISP returnees re-adapted into home country after sojourning years in America and achieve self-realization in China is worth exploring. Thus this thesis is designed to examine the cultural re-adaptation of the ABISP beneficiaries by focusing on their career development.Qualitative case study approach is applied by this thesis. Thirteen academicians in Humanities and Social Sciences division of the Academia Sinica of1948are chosen as sample cases. Autobiographies, biographies, and oral historical records of the thirteen intellectuals are thematically analyzed under the theoretical framework of intercultural adjustment and hybridity with the purpose of revealing their re-adaptation in career life as scholars, educational administrators and government advisors. As the sample intellectuals were the top talents of China, their experiences are worth noticing and are of referential value to future Sino-U.S. educational exchange.This research finds that the13ABISP returnees showed a hybrid identity in the process of cultural re-adaptation in China during which they experienced an "initial smoothness-later conflict" pattern of re-adaptation. Their hybrid character is reflected in how they acted in their roles in career life. As scholars, they were influenced by American way of doing research and way of thinking; but they were critical and creative thinkers at the same time trying to localize American methods in China and finding a balanced point between the imported new knowledge and the legacy left by ancestors. As educational administrators, they selectively borrowed methods and ideas from America such as their course selection system, interdisciplinary and general education mechanism but with the purpose of realizing the independence of Chinese education. As government advisors, they showed an integrated character of traditional Chinese literati and western intellectuals. This is because on one hand they held a position in government as traditional educated elites; but on the other hand they refused to build an intimate relationship with politics, determined to preserve the professionalism as an intellectual.This thesis also discovers that three factors, including early education experience, host country experience and home country’s acceptance to the returnees, are relevant to the formation of hybrid identity among the sample returnees.Last but not least, this thesis believes that the intercultural identity of hybridity among the13returnees can influence the result of re-adaptation. Being hybridity can cause conflict. But when home country showed a supportive attitude towards the returnees, they can transform conflict into creativity, trying to import what they had acquired in America to China to benefit the development of home country. But the returnees’cultural identity as hybridity became a negative capital if the attitude of home country towards them turned to be unfavorable. These returned intellectuals, as being self-consciously detached from political power, would become maladapted and show psychological tension if they underwent great changes in a broad spectrum of external environment. Under such a situation, powerless and stressful returnees chose to be conformists and turned to be silent in order to survive in the harsh environment. Thus, this thesis draws the conclusion that American government’s realization of ABISP’s goal in influencing the development of China through educating intellectuals is largely limited by the factual re-adaptation of the returnees.