Once upon a time at Wake Robin Farm in Oregon, I was miraculously pregnant with our first child.
That same summer, on the Li River in Southern China, a pretty woman exactly my age was also expecting. She and her husband were both artists.
Our child, born in August, was a son. Theirs, born in October, a daughter.
Twenty-two years later these children, now grown, would meet in Beijing.
The girl from Yangshuo had been studying English.
Our son, traveling with a university program, was rapidly become proficient in both Mandarin and Cantonese.
These two could talk to each other.
They could fall in love.
And did.
This is their story.
And ours.
Everything in this book actually happened, even the lovely, fateful coincidences.
Especially those........
So begins my new memoir, which is just out as an ebook and will be available as a paperback shortly. For readers of Children of the River, now in print almost twenty-nine years, Wedding in Yangshuo can be read almost as a companion book, as it explains the inspiration for the YA novel, and shows how deeply impacted the future of my life was by its research, writing, and publication.
For everybody else, my memoir is simply the story of my writing life, my marriage, and the life-changing trip my husband and I took to Yangshuo, trying to carry the family flag as our son married a girl from this most scenic corner of China.
That same summer, on the Li River in Southern China, a pretty woman exactly my age was also expecting. She and her husband were both artists.
Our child, born in August, was a son. Theirs, born in October, a daughter.
Twenty-two years later these children, now grown, would meet in Beijing.
The girl from Yangshuo had been studying English.
Our son, traveling with a university program, was rapidly become proficient in both Mandarin and Cantonese.
These two could talk to each other.
They could fall in love.
And did.
This is their story.
And ours.
Everything in this book actually happened, even the lovely, fateful coincidences.
Especially those........
So begins my new memoir, which is just out as an ebook and will be available as a paperback shortly. For readers of Children of the River, now in print almost twenty-nine years, Wedding in Yangshuo can be read almost as a companion book, as it explains the inspiration for the YA novel, and shows how deeply impacted the future of my life was by its research, writing, and publication.
For everybody else, my memoir is simply the story of my writing life, my marriage, and the life-changing trip my husband and I took to Yangshuo, trying to carry the family flag as our son married a girl from this most scenic corner of China.