China Meiguo

I read a China Daily article recently called A Homeland Away From Home which is about Shirley Wood, an 86 year old American woman has lived in China for 65 years. Wood married a Chinese man and moved from Arkansas to China when she was 20 years old (although I imagine Arkansas to China is quite a culture shock at any age). Wood lives in the city of Kaifeng 开封in Henan Province (abd near Zhengzhou 郑州 where I lived last year).
Wood's story is quite unique in several ways. First of all, she moved to China when there were almost no foreigners living in China. Accordingly, she was one of the few foreigners to be present in China in 1949, the founding of the People's Republic of China. Finally, due to the lack of foreign companions until relatively recently in China, she had to become assimilated and live as a Chinese person. Nowadays, there are more foreigners living in China, but they almost always tend to live somewhat isolated (not necessarily physically) from their Chinese neighbors (due largely to language differences and the resulting inability to communicate well). This may be slowly starting to change, but Mrs. Wood has obviously been a China pioneer, well ahead of the times.