A wonderful story...for those unlike us to read and learn...

[Dennis143]

I was born in a Beijing that has vanished.

 

The way my mother tells it, I forced my way into the world a month early so my birthday would forever be associated with the biggest political festival of the year.

 

It was the early autumn of 1968, and as revelers shouted "Long live Chairman Mao," my parents raced to a hospital during a massive parade commemorating the birth of communist China. As my mother screamed in pain, fireworks lighted the sky over Tiananmen Square.

 

Forty years later, in the transformed capital of a transformed country, the only thing that seems constant is Tiananmen Square itself, with its giant portrait of Mao looming over the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

 

Like a ghost, I had returned to the land of my birth after 20 years in America, not as a comrade but as a correspondent for an American newspaper.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...,0,319847.story

[Guest WenDylan]

Very good story.

[usaRichard]

I was born in a Beijing that has vanished.

 

The way my mother tells it, I forced my way into the world a month early so my birthday would forever be associated with the biggest political festival of the year.

 

It was the early autumn of 1968, and as revelers shouted "Long live Chairman Mao," my parents raced to a hospital during a massive parade commemorating the birth of communist China. As my mother screamed in pain, fireworks lighted the sky over Tiananmen Square.

 

Forty years later, in the transformed capital of a transformed country, the only thing that seems constant is Tiananmen Square itself, with its giant portrait of Mao looming over the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

 

Like a ghost, I had returned to the land of my birth after 20 years in America, not as a comrade but as a correspondent for an American newspaper.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...,0,319847.story

 

"None of us spoke English or had ever flown before -- our most familiar mode of transportation was the bicycle. We threw up during the entire flight and didn't know what an air-sickness bag was until a Chinese speaker came to our aid."

 

What a wonderful flight that would have been

 

Richard

[Corbin]

Wow to have grown up at the time of such great change is something else. She was part of a time like our grandparent her in America were part of. America went from farming to to industrial to information age in many of our Grandparents time of life. From horse and buggy to the ability to send a man to the moon.

 

This is the type of story that shows both side of China without painting it one way or another.

[credzba]

The story brings tears to my eyes.

 

I don't know the age of your wives, but my wife is of the age that she grew up in this same era. The life and hardships that our families endured, are a part of who they are today.

 

It is a testimony to the strength of their person, and their ability to survive hardship that they are not only here today, but most have survived divorce in a very unforgiving culture for divorce.

They have survived raising children by themselves for a number of years.

They have learned enough computer, and english to find love with a foreign husband.

 

Our wives are not only survivors, they are winners.

 

As they struggle with english, and america culture, and with training their savage american husbands to do things properly , I hope we all can remember what wonderful wives we have, and always appreciate them even more for who they are and what they have overcome.