Thomas Gold was a member of the first group of American government-sponsored exchange students to China from February 1979 through February 1980. This was just months after the Chinese Communist Party reoriented its work to economic development and opening to the outside world. This presentation introduces the “baggage” he took with him to China and how it shaped his expectations and interactions. He engaged primarily with three communities: his classmates at Fudan University in Shanghai; people affiliated with the Ming Hsien School run by the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association in Shanxi Province, and people he interpreted for during trips to the United States beginning in 1974, including athletes, performers, officials and others. Through these relationships he gained an understanding of how people were thinking about what the reforms might mean for their futures and how they might take advantage of new opportunities now that some agency had been returned to them.

Thomas Gold is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UC Berkeley, where he taught from 1981 to 2018. He has published widely on issues such as youth, entrepreneurship, civil society and popular culture in China, and economic, social, cultural and political change in Taiwan. His most recent book is Sunflowers and Umbrellas: Social Movements, Expressive Practices, and Political Culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He is working on a memoir of his year in China, 1979-1980, and a study of social change in Taiwan since the end of Martial Law in 1987.