By Justin Gordon
Dalian, China
In 1985 at 60 years old my Grandmother decided to move to China to teach English. While she spent most of her six months in the country teaching in the city of Dalian located on the east side of the Yellow Sea, she did have a chance to travel throughout. When she left, she even took a train from Beijing to West Berlin. I was only three years old at the time, but over the course of the last 30 years she has described her experiences in vivid detail a bit at a time. The China she knew was only about a decade past the turbulent “Cultural Revolution” period. She described streets filled with far more bicycles than cars. English speakers were difficult to find, even in large cities. Telephones capable of calling back to the U.S. were few and the cost was substantial. The primary means by which she communicated with my grandfather was by mail; letters could take up to weeks to arrive. Her depiction is of a country rich in culture and history, as well as one with a great deal of possibility, but a nation with a long way to go to realize it’s full potential. Continue reading
