Leaving China

I've been riding the bus to work. Last week, we got caught in a crush of traffic. A woman came to the back of the bus where I was buried in Read Chinese, a beginning Chinese character reader. My lips are moving, I'm flipping the pages back and forth to look up characters and decode the sentences. She's from China, came over in 1988. That's just before Tiananmen. Next time I see her, do I ask why she left?

The country has an incredible history. She came back again, happy to see me. I showed her the book, read a couple of sentences (badly). Must be frustrating to teach Chinese to English speakers. The pronounciations are so delicate and so unlike anything we 'mericans have to master.