The work of Tai Kuo-hui was centered on an exploration into the personal sense of identity of a man who was at once Hakka, Taiwanese, and Chinese. Set 1 (Volumes 1-9 ) of the 27-volume Complete Works focuses on "historiography and Taiwan," the subject that occupied more of his attention than any other in a lifetime of study. For the name of Volume 1, the editing team borrowed the title of a book published by Tai in 1976, Monologues from a Man of the Border World. The term "man of the border world" covers everything the professor thought about over the course of his life, and reflects the urgent searching of an entire generation of Taiwan intellectuals.

The learned Professor Tai Kuo-hui left behind a huge book collection. Included among the items donated to the Academia Sinica's Joint Library of Humanities and Social Sciences are a large number of rare and valuable materials relating to the February 28 Incident.

Born in Taoyuan in 1931, Tai earned a doctorate in agricultural economics from the University of Tokyo, then spent a further 41 years in Japan. He took a position in 1996 as a National Security Council advisor for President Lee Teng-hui before passing away in 2001. Editing of the Complete Works got started after his death. A key role in the project was played by Tai's widow, described by her children as the project's "bulldozer."

Publishing houses in Taiwan do not have a lot of experience putting out collections of the complete works of individual authors. Those running the project consulted with Zhang Jin-lang, formerly of the National Central Library, and eventually contracted with Wen-Hsun magazine to handle the editing. The team there worked feverishly, finally finishing the project after two years and four months.

The eclectically minded Tai delved into such topics as Taiwan history, overseas Chinese, Asia, culture, and language. The editors divided the Complete Works into the following categories: historiography and Taiwan; overseas Chinese and the economy; Japan and Asia; people and history; culture and life; book reviews and prefaces; and interviews and dialogues. The collection is augmented by an additional volume filled with valuable photographs, timelines, and the like.

A particularly noteworthy aspect of the Complete Works is the inclusion of many of Tai's previously unpublished writings. In 1969, for example, he wrote "The Wushe Incident in the Eyes of the Taiwan Left of the Time," in which he set out and compared the views of Communist Party supporters (such as Su Mu-hong, of the Taiwan Communist Party) in the 1930s. The writings he compared had all appeared in banned leftist publications such as International, Pacific Worker, Industrial Labor Times, and New Taiwan People Times. This work, taken together with other leftist articles included in the Complete Works, fills gaps in research on leftist politics in Taiwan, and is valuable to any seeking to understand the thinking of 1930s intellectuals.

Two-thirds of the writings included in the Complete Works were originally published in Japanese, so the editing team was presented with the Herculean task of taking elegant Japanese and translating it "faithfully, understandably, and elegantly," as the saying goes, into Chinese. During the translation project, Mrs. Tai showed forcefully how much she cares about understanding -kanji (Chinese characters) as used in Japan, and about expressing them properly in Chinese.

Mrs. Tai believes that the -kanji in the professor's writings tie into his academic views, and a facile rendering into commonly used Chinese expressions does not do them justice. The Japanese term 市民 (shi-min), often rendered into English as "inhabitant," "resident," or "citizen") for example, is fiendishly difficult to render into Chinese because the term 公民 (Chinese gong-min-"citizen") doesn't exist in the exact same sense in Japanese, yet shi-min as used in Japanese contains nuances not present in Chinese usage.

Mrs. Tai explains that during their 41 years in Japan, even though they were Japanese shi-min, they nevertheless would not be described in Chinese as gong-min of Japan because they neither held Japanese passports nor had the right to vote. In Japanese, both they and their neighbors with voting rights were referred to as shi-min, but this term as applied to them cannot be translated into Chinese as gong-min. What is more, Professor Tai's writings frequently focus on the process of democratic evolution, and in that context he used the term shimin in describing a progression from feudalism to an "age of the shi-min" characterized by freedom and equality. But if one were to use the term gong-min in Chinese, it would take on a "state-nation" nuance, so in translating the Complete Works they have used both shi-min and gong-min, with the choice depending on context.

The Japanese also speak of 中華人性 (chuu-ka-jin sei-"the nature of ethnically Chinese people") and 華人系 (ka-jin kei-"of ethnic Chinese derivation"), terms which are peculiarly Japanese in flavor. The Japanese meaning of chuu-ka-jin sei is similar to the Chinese term 華人特質 (hua-ren te-zhi), but in Professor Tai's system of thought the term 華人 (hua-ren-"ethnically Chinese people") refers in Southeast Asia especially to 中國人 (zhong-guo-ren-"Chinese people") who are into their second or third generation overseas and have assimilated into local society, whereas zhong-guo-ren generally refers more to a group of people by descent or national origin. The term zhong-guo-ren is a common way to refer to the people of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, for example. Professor Tai felt that 華僑 (hua-qiao-"overseas Chinese") in the 1970s referred in Southeast Asia especially to "newly arrived hua-qiao" who had not assimilated, thus the term hua-ren cannot be used as a blanket appellation for everyone.

As a research fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies in 1969, Tai went on a study tour of Southeast Asia, and at that time he frequently published calls in the Japanese news media for academia to clearly distinguish between different groups within overseas Chinese communities in accordance with those groups' own self-identities. The anti-Chinese sentiment then raging in Malaysia forced many ethnic Chinese to choose to become assimilated "hua-ren." Once assimilated, such people fell in a different category from the "newly arrived hua-qiao."

Mrs. Tai feels that translating the Japanese chuu-ka-jin sei into Chinese as hua-ren te-zhi doesn't cover the hua-ren on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, so she opts instead to go with zhong-hua-ren te-zhi so as to cover both the hua-ren and zhong-guo-ren nuances, and to allow for such parallel expressions as "the nature of the Indian people," "the nature of the Burmese people," and the like. As for the Japanese term 華人系 (ka-jin kei-"of ethnic Chinese derivation"), she eschews the Chinese term hua-qiao because of its connection to the idea of kinship, and instead retains the 華人系 (hua-ren xi in Chinese) wording so as to cover both the 華僑 (hua-qiao) and 華人 (hua-ren) groups.

"The Complete Works aren't about what we want to say, but what Professor Tai wanted to say." So explains Wang Jung-wen, chairman of Yuan-Liou Publishing, expressing Tai's desire to see his pronouncements and writings, which are based on comprehensive academic training received in Japan, fully and accurately conveyed. The members of the editing team, says Wang, are merely the executors of this wish.

In Monologues from a Man of the Border World, published in 1976 in Japan, Tai sets out his views on Asia as a Chinese person living in Japan, and provides a few suggestions regarding some narrow-minded Japanese views of Asia.

By referring to himself in the title as a 境界人 (kyo-kai-jin-"man of the border world"), Tai has chosen a term that in Chinese has echoes of "encounter, situation, and border lands," and may even be interpreted as conveying the idea of a "marginalized person." But Tai was definitely not the sort of writer to indulge in self-pity, nor was he a disadvantaged person living on the margins of society. All his life, he stuck faithfully by a fixed ethnic identity that inspired neither shame nor haughtiness in him. A Chinese person who dealt with the Japanese as his equals, he explored and continually attempted to clarify what it meant to be simultaneously Hakka, Taiwanese, and Chinese. He was, indeed, "a man of the border world," caught up in a jumbled sense of identity that allowed him to be a part of neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of -China. This "border world" identity shows up throughout the Complete Works. But it is up to the reader to get his own feel for it.