A Cup of Light

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my editor, Jackie Cantor, a sage and caring guide who somehow, at every turn, made me choose the way myself. Thanks to my agent, Bonnie Nadell, for intelligence, grace and good humor at the helm.

Mee-Seen Loong took me by the hand and led me into her world of porcelain. Her knowledge and love of pots, her adeptness in the intersecting subcultures surrounding them, and her endlessly interesting ideas about them educated and inspired me. My research also owes much to published scholarship, especially the work of Julian Thompson, Regina Krahl, Liu Xinyuan, and Wen C. Fong.

To those in Hong Kong and Jingdezhen who talked to me about ah chans, thank you for your candor and for cracking the door to this underworld, just enough.

I am grateful to the Morgan Library for allowing me to examine the 1913 correspondence between J. P. Morgan’s office in New York and F. H. McKnight in Peking, and to James Traub for first writing about this historical episode and then generously answering my questions.

Dr. Joan Rothlein and Dr. Herb Needleman were of great help in researching lead poisoning. In matters related to pediatric hearing loss I am indebted to Beth Cardwell, M.D., and the Audiology department at Oregon Health Sciences University.

For insight, ideas, and information, my gratitude to Fred Hill, Sabrina Ullman Mathews, Richard Herzfelder, Jason Tse, Nicolas Chow, Jon Conte, Marta Aragones, Lucy Metcalf, Jin Mei, Rone Tempest and Laura Richardson, Anthony Kuhn, Kemin Zhang, Chris Perkins, Nancy Beers, and Huang Zhifeng.

A debt of inspiration is due to The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan Spence, “Funes, the Memorious” by Jorge Luis Borges, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, and especially The Art of Memory by Frances Yates.

Ben and Luke, I could never have written this book without your generosity in releasing me to the task. For everything else, my first and last thanks are for Paul Mones.