In the United States, Guy Alitto, Associate Professor of History at Chicago University is known as an authority on Chinese history, language, and culture—one of the first Americans to visit China on early diplomatic missions in the 1970s. In China, he is renowned as an interpreter of American culture and as the author of a number one bestseller. ICLP he is proudly known as an alumnus.

Needless to say, studying Chinese was not as easy in the late 1960s and early 1970s when Professor Alitto and his wife lived in Taipei. His undergraduate college offered no non-Western courses, and even Chicago where he was a graduate student still didn't have any modern Chinese courses. “Lunyu [The Analects] was our first year textbook. I studied for a year, but still couldn’t really order anything at a restaurant,” he chuckles recalling Chinese study in the United States.

Having only known Chinese culture though textbooks, he was immediately fascinated by everyday life in Taipei, looking for reflections of a different philosophy therein. He recounts that no one used street numbers, which he interpreted through his knowledge of Chinese Cosmology: “In the classics, everything is in flux, but it’s a pattern flux… The universe itself is conceived of as a great organic whole with interpenetrating, interdependent parts. In the same way, you can’t really identify a place by some numerical, binary value.”

He and his wife lived in Xindian, which was at the time the countryside. Their first week there a violent typhoon flooded the area. “The next morning everything picked up where it had left off,” he remarked. It was for Professor Alitto, a chance to meditate on Chinese social organization. It was also his first time to leave the United States.

Professor Alitto made good use of his time outside of the classroom. “Sanjiaojiuliu [三教九流],” he says, “our friends were of all sectors and levels of society.” Accompanying another IUP student to a dining club meeting, he had a chance to befriend King Hu (胡金銓), father of martial arts cinema. He and his wife also appeared in skits for a television English learning program, and later a Peking opera New Year’s special. “Everyone noticed me on the street because of that program!”

Life in Taipei may not be as unpredictable these days, but it’s still a good place for the adventurous foreign student to balance classroom learning with unexpected extracurricular activities.