An American in Guangzhou

Often what makes life so intriguing, I think, is that we never know what might be waiting for us around the next corner. In my own life, for example, if a fortune teller had predicted when I was a child that I would enter a convent in Wisconsin at the age of fourteen and then leave after spending 25 years of my life there, that a marriage of 20 years would end in divorce, that my academic career would include fellowships at Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge, that I would teach in China, everyone who knew me would have laughed at the improbability of it all, myself included. I have no idea what is next, but for me, living and teaching in China was a life-changing event. I turned many corners and discovered some wonderful surprises, all of them opening my eyes a little wider regarding cultural diversity and its many dimensions.