The idea for this book came to us in early September 2001, when we were walking the streets of San Francisco (the official reason for the trip was a meeting of the American Political Science Association). We were struck by the charm of the city and speculated that it would be a good idea to walk the streets of different cities and write a book about our experiences. A few days later, however, terrorists struck in New York, and the plan was shelved. It seemed impossible to imagine that it would be possible to stroll in our favorite cities without fear of the world collapsing before our eyes.
Fortunately, we were too pessimistic, and the project was revived a few years later. At this stage we had read a lot on strolling as a method of research, and we encountered much enthusiasm and encouragement. Hence, we would like to thank the generous support of the Max Kampelman Chair for Democracy and Human Rights at the Hebrew University, the Lady Davis Fellowship (which allowed Daniel to spend two months in Jerusalem), as well as the Department of Philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Jiaotong University in Shanghai. We are also grateful to the East Asian Institute in Singapore for supporting Daniel’s stay in Singapore longer than was strictly necessary. We wish also to express our thanks to three very energetic and helpful research assistants, Orly Peled, Alon Gold, and Nimrod Kovner, and to Emilie Frenkiel, Marie-Eve Reny, and Kevin Tan, who helped us to secure photos for the book.
Much of our research focused on talking to family members, friends, and strangers in the streets of our nine cities, and some of these interviews were intensive and very long. We want to thank our interviewees: they were patient, helpful, and very cooperative. They are named in the book itself, so we won’t thank them by name here.
Early drafts of chapters were presented and discussed in seminars and workshops. We are grateful for the feedback of our colleagues at Concordia University, Duke University, Fudan University, Hebrew University, Heilongjiang University, Huafan University, University of Hong Kong, University of Macau, City College of Hunan, McGill University, Princeton University, Rhodes University, Oxford University, and Tsinghua University. We confess that some of these ideas were presented before they were mature and we thank our colleagues for patiently putting us on the right track.
We are very grateful for family members, friends, and colleagues who discussed and commented on individual chapters: Judy Abrams, Tevia Abrams, Eitan Alimi, Daniel Attas, Shlomo Avineri, Bai Tongdong, Céline Bell, Julien Bell, Valérie Bell, Eyal Ben-Ari, Fran Bennett, Annie Billington, Sébastien Billioud, Kateri Carmola, Joseph Chan, Maurice Charland, Chee Soon Juan, Anne Cheng, Chua Beng Huat, Ci Jiwei, G. A. Cohen, Sébastien Correc, Nevia Dolcini, Jack Donnelly, Michael Dowdle, James Fallows, Fan Ruiping, Emilie Frenkiel, Nicole Hochner, Noam Hofshtater, Ian Holliday, P. J. Ivanhoe, Jiang Haibo, Lily Kaplan, Gillian Koh, Lee Chun-Yi, Donna Levy, Li Ying, Liu Kang, Kimberley Manning, Kai Marchal, David Miller, Glenn Mott, Lilach Nir, Anthony Ou, Paik Wooyeal, Randy Peerenboom, Daphna Perry, Kam Razavi, Marie-Eve Reny, Mike Sayig, Tatiana Sayig, Phillippe Schmitter, Joseph Schull, Daniel Schwartz, Shlomi Segall, Song Bing, Kristin Stapleton, Kevin Tan, Joel Thoraval, Wang Hao, Lynn White, Jonathan Wolff, Gadi Wolfsfled, Benjamin Wong, David Yang, Peter Zabielskis, Bo Zhiyue, and Zhu Er. We are particularly grateful for friends who commented on the large bulk of the manuscript—Parag Khanna, Leanne Ogasawara, and Jiang Qian—as well as for two referees for Princeton University Press, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Weinstock, who wrote thoughtful and constructive reports that helped us to improve the manuscript.
Princeton University Press has been excellent. Our editors—Ian Malcolm and Rob Tempio, as well as the press’s director, Peter Dougherty—have been supportive and enthusiastic, and have encouraged us throughout the various stages of publication. We are also grateful for the careful copyediting of Madeleine Adams and to Leslie Grundfest for the efficient production of the manuscript.
Last but not least, we are most grateful to our family members. If it’s true that our identities were constituted in our cities, they helped us along the way and made the whole thing worthwhile.