Dear Colleagues, Please join me in welcoming John Stuermer (jrstuermer@gmail.com ) to the listserv. He describes his interest in the Song-Yuan period thus: I completed my Ph.d thesis in 1980 on the topic of water conservancy, agricultural development and property rights in the Lake Tai Basin during the Southern Song. My dissertation supervisor was Robert Hartwell, but I also received a great deal of advice and encouragement from Yanagida Setsuko and Shiba Yoshinobu in Japan. I lived in Japan from 1975 to 1979, working for a Japanese consulting firm for three years and received a Fulbright Fellowship for my last year in Japan. I then went to work for the First National Bank of Chicago, upon my return to the United States in late 1980. I subsequently worked for the investment bank Bear Stearns until its untimely demise in early 2008, and then for the Asian Development Bank until the end of last year. However, I started visiting Professor Shiba and the Toyo Bunko Kenkyujo soon after I arrived at the ADB, to collect materials to update my Ph.D. thesis material. In particular, these visits to the Toyo Bunko Kenkyujo have allowed me to extend my xian- or county level – data bases for indicators such as land area, water conservancy projects, population, etc. , in keeping with Robert Hartwell’s view of history as a tool to examine social and economic change over time. In the meantime, I have published a small article on the Lake Tai Basin during the Southern Song in a German publication on social and economic history, Internationale Studien zur Geshichte von Wirstschaft und Geselleschaft, in 2012. Most recently, I have been working at reviving my spoken Chinese - after 30 years of non-use - in Taiwan, since the beginning of this year. I am returning to my home in Chicago for the summer, but plan to return to Taiwan in the Fall, and also visit some of my favorite locales in the Lake Tai Basin and to consult with PRC scholars on my topics of interest. Yours truly, Michael