This book is a direct result of the wonderful support I have received throughout the research and writing of it. I only now realize how ambitious I was when I started this project and how fortunate I have been since. My deepest gratitude goes to my advisors Beata Grant and Robert E. Hegel at Washington University in Saint Louis. They are my academic parents, heroes, and intellectual champions. They helped crystallize my interest in the cultural exchange between China and Korea and deserve any

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... aise this study might earn. Without their limitless guidance and support this book could not have been completed. I am also grateful to Lingchei Letty Chen, Steven B. Miles, Lori Watt, and Jamie Newhard at Washington University, who served on my dissertation committee and offered many valuable suggestions for transforming my dissertation into a book. This project has its origins in a trip to Zhejiang, China that I made in 2000 with my friend Park Chanyoung, to whom this book is dedicated. Despite being ill during that trip, Chanyoung took care of many details so that I could focus solely on exploring places related to the Butterfly Lovers story. Her enduring support and friendship, which began when we first met in college, gave me the will to complete this project. I am also profoundly grateful to the two eminent Chinese scholars, Wang Zhaoqian and Cao Lin, who generously offered me their help but unfortunately left the world before they could hold this book in their hands. At Arizona State University, I am grateful first of all to Sally Kitch at the Institute of Humanities Research and to Juliane Schober at the Center for Asian Research. They saw the value of this book and extended their full support for me to conduct extensive archival and field research in Asia and the US. This vote of expression of confidence from my own school, along with other invaluable support from the Association for Asian Studies, the Kyu-x • acknowledgments janggak Institute at Seoul National University, and the Harvard Yenching Institute, were crucial to the completion of this project. My special thanks go also to Nina Berman