CHUS: An Unfinished Journey of Transnationalism

Abstract

When he was asked about the impact of the French Revolution, as the legend goes, the late premier Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) apocryphally responded: “It's too early to tell.” That was nearly two centuries after the revolution occurred. The Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS) is no French Revolution and was not founded until two decades ago. Given the brevity of its existence, it appears to be precariously “too early” to talk about its history and too presumptuous to tell its impact. But historians are impatient people and obsessed with documenting history, which they regard as their calling. Papers included in this forum, however, are not exactly histories, at least not in the sense of academic historians like to define. They are more like stories told by those who were involved in the creation and development of CHUS and its journal. The storytellers happen to be historians.