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Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Special thanks are given here to Xu Daming in Nanjing and Li-Hai Tan, Stephen Matthews, and Virginia Yip in Hong Kong for being such gracious hosts. Stephen and Virginia also took the time to read portions of the manuscript and have given me great support, generous help, and invaluable advice.
Many people have contributed to my rewarding experience at the University of Western Sydney. Among them, I would like to extend thanks to the following friends and colleagues: Denis McInerney and Sun Dekun; Satomi Kawaguchi, Sandra Hale, George Saunders, Rosemary Suliman, Guo Wu, Mustapha Taibi, and Xiangdong Liu in the School of Humanities and Languages; Kate Stevens, Denis Burnham, Cathi Best, Colin Schoknecht, Johnson Chen, and Darlene Williams in MARCS; and Michael Kennedy in the School of Social Sciences. I immensely appreciate the help of Caroline Jones, who contributed time and skills to edit my draft and make useful suggestions.
Paul Richardson has been a wonderful editor to work with. Many thanks are due to him for his great support and patience. I also wish to thank the entire staff of Cambria Press for their ingenious cover design, professional guidance, and helpful suggestions. I am especially grateful to the director, Toni Tan, and assistant director, Michelle Wright, for their excellent advice, professionalism, and support during the process of manuscript preparation.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my family—especially to my husband, Yun Zhang, for his love, understanding, firm support, and constant encouragement throughout the years of my study. His wonderful formatting work and computer help made the completion of my manuscript easier. I am ever grateful to him and to our two multilingual children, James and Joy, for putting up with endless evenings of my “absence” while I was glued to the computer screen. I am deeply indebted to my mum, dad, my sister Xiaoying, and brother-in-law Jack for their love, understanding, unfailing support, and endless confidence in me, which helped me in times of difficulty. Mum, it is you who fuelled me with passion and wisdom. 
!Particular thanks go to Xiaoying for helping me accomplish the arduous transcription