1970. He worked with the leading American Sinologist John K. Fairbank. Nevertheless, Huang and Fairbank disagreed in research methodology. Fairbank liked concentrated analysis in short time frames and limited areas, but Huang liked synthesis covering broad time periods (though Huang's classic work 1587, a Year of No Significance had a very tight focus). In 1972, Huang went to Cambridge University and assisted Joseph Needham, who was more sympathetic to Huang's research approach, in Needham's monumental work on the history of Chinese science and technology. Huang's chosen field of study became financial administration in Ming China, and he published one of his major works, Taxation and Finance in Sixteenth Century Ming China, in 1974 (translated into Chinese only in 2001). Huang returned to Cambridge in the mid 1970s and contributed two chapters to the Ming Dynasty Volumes of The Cambridge History of China. Around the late 1970s, he retired from teaching and focused on writing instead and even occasionally contributed to a column in Yazhou Zhoukan. Nonetheless, he often travelled to Taiwan even after his retirement to give lectures and participate in various academic exchanges. His other works include The War in Northern Burma (1946), 1587, a Year of No Significance (1981) (also published in Chinese as The Fifteenth Year of Wan Li/《萬曆十五年》, 1985), Broadening the Chinese Field of Vision (in Chinese, 1988), Chinese Macrohistory (1988) (in Chinese 1993), Conversations about Chinese History on the Banks of the Hudson River (in Chinese 1989), Discussions of Here and There and Old and New (in Chinese 1991), Capitalism and the Twenty First Century (in Chinese 1991), From a Macrohistory Perspective in Reading Jiang Jieshi's Diary (in Chinese 1993), Contemporary Chinese Outlets (in Chinese 1994), The Affair of Wan Chong (in Chinese 1998), Yellow River Blue Mountain: Record of Huang Renzi's Recollections (in Chinese 2001), and Bianjing Unfinished Dreams. Personal life Huang married Gayle Bates (1937–2000) in 1966. The two had a son, Jefferson, a longtime administrator at Claremont McKenna College, as well as two other sons from his wife's previous marriage. Huang died of a heart attack in 2000. Books 1587, a Year of No Significance. First published in English (Yale University Press, 1981), with Chinese (Wanli Shiwunian) and other language translations. China: A Macro History Fiscal Administration during the Ming Dynasty Conversation on Chinese History by the Hudson River (in Chinese) Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History: Discourses, Syntheses, and Comparisons Capitalism