James Liang's roots go back to his ancestral home in Hopeh, but he was born in Hupeh in a teacher's dormitory at Wuhan University. At the age of one he was carried home to see his grandfather who gave him two eggs. This is the sum total of his experience of his home town as they only stayed one day before his father had to take off again.

At the age of two Liang's parents fled from the Japanese, and during the eight years of war against Japan they stayed in Szechwan. After victory over Japan, he travelled along the Yangtze River and went to Peking and Shenyang to study. Not long after Manchuria fell into turmoil he became a migrant student, travelling down to Tientsin. When the situation in the North became critical he went to Nanking and Canton, until he finally took a ship to Keelung. However, after the February 28 incident the ship did not dare to enter port but went straight to Kaohsiung, where he entered junior school.

Liang says, "When I was thirteen and a half I decided to study medicine. There was no way I was not going to be a doctor." He recalls how when fleeing from the north to the south of China under fire, the student behind him was hit by a bullet and fell on top of him. Liang grabbed the wounded student's hand and ran but his fellow student died. This was the beginning of his obsession with the idea of becoming a doctor.

In high school, Liang's determination to enter National Taiwan University led him to the habit of burning the candle at both ends by drinking strong tea, and in the end alcohol, to keep him at his studies. When he started on the mathematics exam he felt confident as he looked over the subjects, but after the second question he fainted away.

In the end he went to the National Defense Medical Center but after studying for one year he developed a stomach ulcer and had to stay in hospital for six months. The Dean, a doctor from Columbia University, went to hospital to visit him, and just exclaimed, "Kids! How can you study like this and get yourself into such a corner? You should go and study literature for a while to develop your personality and then come back again."

After Liang left the hospital his ideas did change and he sat the exams for the English Department of the National Taiwan Normal University. Moving from science to culture, his exam achievements were not the best but through hard work in the first year he came third in class and in the second year he came top. However, by the fourth year he had changed his mind again and went to National Taiwan University and Soochow University, to attend law course.

Liang studied seriously but neglected preparation for the final exam in literature, so he borrowed notes from fellow students and went to the bookshops to buy all the Chinese editions of four of Shakespeare's tragedies. The main exam had two subjects. The first was Hamlet, which he could bluff his way through; but the second was giving examples of the differences between Shakespearean English and modern English, which he could not do. Instead he just wrote a long article explaining how his plans had changed and what his future aspirations were. Two days later he was notified that the Dean, Liang Shih-chiu, a famous writer and the best known translator of Shakespeare in Taiwan, wanted to see him.

At their meeting Liang senior asked: "Well, I have seen what you wrote in the exam. Did you tell the truth?" Liang junior replied that he had, and offered to let Liang senior see his notebooks as proof. When he returned to his dormitory and brought back all the notebooks, there were so many that he had to ask a fellow student to help him carry them.

After a while Liang senior said, "Alright, I do not want to spoil your big plan, so tell me how many marks you think you deserve." Liang junior replied that ninety would be high enough and after thinking it over Liang senior replied: "Alright, what you have done deserves ninety but what you have written is not Shakespeare. We can have a gentlemen's agreement: I will let you pass but you must promise to spend some time reading Shakespeare."

When Liang junior became a professor himself, he was very strict with his students but he always insists that his students have the right to plan their own future. "I learned a lot from Liang Shih-chiu," he says. "Not English and not Shakespeare but the correct attitude."

Actually, the gentlemen's agreement had a dramatic outcome because James Liang did not go to law school but registered to study English Literature overseas. On the other side of the Pacific he first studied English at Seattle University, then six months later he transferred to anthropology and later travelled across the United States to Pennsylvania, the main place at which to study linguistics. His nomadic personality came out more and more as he worked through the departments of linguistics, physics mathematics, electronics, and so on, until he became a well-known "professional post graduate."

He says, "Linguistics is so all-embracing and covers so many subjects that the more you study the more complicated it becomes and one thing always leads on to another. Post-graduate studies in the US do not limit you but allow you to develop your own ideas." In the end the Dean had to be strict and insist that he take his exams. He passed, became a Ph.D. and got a research project from the National Science Foundation to research computer translation, until he was invited to become professor at Leiden in 1977. In all he stayed in the US for twenty years, of which about fourteen or fifteen were spent in the thriving atmosphere of Philadelphia.

When Liang moved to the quiet university town of Leiden it seemed to fit what his Dean's expectations had been when he had told him long ago to change his course to literature. The relaxed pace of life in the beautiful town of canals, green fields and people riding bicycles hit him when he was woken on the first morning by the birds singing.

Comparing the differences between Europe and the US, Liang says, "Europeans have always gone to America to plate themselves with the silver of money, while Americans have gone to Europe to plate themselves with the gold of culture. Of course, this is more or less exaggerated but these two cultures do have a difference. In America everyone has to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and show what they are made of, while in Europe you have to learn to be modest or people will think you are strange."

However, compared to other European countries, Holland is very open-minded and foreigners are under no pressure. On the contrary, Professor Liang sometimes gives Leiden a culture shock: the first time he attended a reception at the Institute of Sinology and his daughter started crying in her cot, the American-style father provoked mixed reactions when he calmly set about attending to the baby's nappies; then in the classroom he adopted a relaxed American style and told his students he wanted to treat them as his friends--after class two students knocked on the door to ask if he really meant it.

In 1983 Professor Liang went to mainland China for one year to do research and he was also invited by Peking University to give lectures on linguistics. He says, "From 1949 to 1979 mainland China had closed its door and linguistics was stuck in the 1930s." He decided to spend two and a half months to give the students an update on developments in linguistics.

After the second lecture the party secretary knocked on his door in the evening and said, "Professor Liang, are you trying to bring Western spiritualism to our society?" Liang replied in confusion. "It was you who invited me to lecture. If you do not accept them, do not come to the lectures; if you do not agree, then do not agree." The lectures were stopped for three days until the party secretary came again. This time he said, "Professor Liang, you are welcome, please continue your lectures. But we do not actually agree with all that you say."

Liang saw many strange things in the early 1980s on the mainland, such as Peking University buying 20 copying machines which they did not know how to use, and building a new block but being unable to equip it with all the necessary utilities. "It was a pity to go back after so many years to the place and find it still so unstable," he remarks.

The harsh experiences of fleeing in his youth have been far reaching for Professor Liang. His definition of home is "where you feel content," a feeling that can occur anywhere. A Chinese skin and cultural background, educated in the West and with an American passport, now a professor of Sinology in Holland--this is the portrait of the twentieth-century Chinese nomad. Why are there so many twentieth-century Chinese "nomads"?

[Picture Caption]

James Liang mockingly refers to himself as a "nomad tribesman," but his air of gentility and cultivation betrays long years of patient striving for knowledge.

In addition to teaching at Leiden University's Institute of Sinology, Dr. Liang also carries out administrative duties there.

Discussions and negotiations occupy so much of Dr. Liang's time that he often feels he needs more than 24 hours in the day.

A pipe constantly at hand is Dr. Liang's trademark.

In addition to teaching at Leiden University's Institute of Sinology, Dr. Liang also carries out administrative duties there.

Discussions and negotiations occupy so much of Dr. Liang's time that he often feels he needs more than 24 hours in the day.

A pipe constantly at hand is Dr. Liang's trademark.