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Acknowledgments
I owe the original idea of this book to Rodney Hall, who told me of Brian Castro in the late 1980s in China and suggested that I write something on the Chinese in Australian literature if a chance came up in the future.
My thanks first go to La Trobe University for supporting me with a three-and-a-half-year scholarship, without which I could not have written the original thesis before turning it into a book. Equally, I thank the Australia-China Council for giving me a three-year grant that helped me partially cover tuition fees, thus lessening the difficulty I would otherwise have encountered in my study at La Trobe.
During the course of writing this book, I have had great help and encouragement from many people. Chief among them is my supervisor Professor John Barnes, a constant source of intellectual stimulation, academic discipline, great learning, and supreme patience. Without his strict and rigorous supervision, I would not have produced the thesis on which the book is based. Mr Laurie Clancy, during Professor Barnes’s absence from La Trobe, took over the supervision as a scrupulous and conscientious teacher who was always willing to listen, analyse, and help me revise.