Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Richard Solomon was a professor of political science at the Univerity of Michigan, a White House staffer who worked on "ping-pong diplomacy" under Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration, and a scholar of Chinese history and politics. This collection consists primarily of interviews with Chinese refugees and subsequent computer data printouts and analysis of these interviews.

This collection is organized into two series: Interview Materials and Professional Materials, and primarily documents interviews conducted by Solomon and his associates, likely for Solomon's dissertation on Chinese political culture. The majority of the materials are written in Chinese, although there are some interview transcriptions, interview analyses, and reports written in English.

The Interview Materials series is divided into two subseries: (1) Interviews; and (2) Data and Analysis. The Interviews subseries is comprised of interview responses and transcripts; various tests, evaluations, and score sheets; and handwritten materials. The Data and Analysis subseries is comprised primarily of computer data printouts, although it also contains some reports authored by Solomon on changing Chinese culture, as well as a magnetic data tape.

Researchers may find the folder "Interview Materials, General," located in Box 3 of the Interviews subseries, helpful in understanding some of the abbreviations used throughout the papers, the reasoning behind the interviews, and how the interviews were written up. Some commonly used acronyms are: "RT," which stands for Rorschach Test; a T or H preceding a number stands for either Taiwan or Hong Kong; "Trad-Mod" stands for "Traditionality - modernity," which was an attitude scale used by Solomon to quantitatively measure degrees "of modernity."

The Professional Materials series is comprised of a single folder titled "Ping Pong" that contains handwritten notes and various newspaper clippings related to the Chinese ping pong team's visit to the United States in 1972.