A China Retrospective combines memoir, travel and history in an account of a year teaching young professionals English in Beijing. It was a time when memories of the Cultural Revolution were still fresh and raw but also a time of openness and hopefulness. The candor of students was often disarming. It was a time when the bicycle reigned as favored transportation and before the age of the cell phone. Living in my own apartment, doing my own shopping and cooking enabled participation in daily life. Travel throughout China from the far northwest to the far south and Tibet added to a deep dive into life in China. Movies, television programming, popular fiction and newspapers round out personal experience in this wide-ranging story.
