John King Fairbank was born in South Dakota in 1907. In 1926, "knowing nothing about China, purely out of curiosity," he entered Harvard to study Chinese history. After graduation he went to Oxford to research modern Sino-English relations.
費正清於西元一九○七年出生於美國南達可達州，一九二六年在「對中國一無所知，純粹是好奇」的動機下，進入哈佛大學攻讀中國歷史，畢業後又到英國牛津大學研究近代中英關係。