Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

No links or recommendations from me this week, for two reasons:

1. Ugh, the news. I can’t.
2. Work.

BUT, today is the 20-year anniversary of my first arrival in China so I’ve decided to re-share an essay I wrote in 2015 about that initial trip.

Thanks for joining me this week.

Ten Years Ago In China

I landed in Beijing on February 16, 2005. I had tried to go to China before: as a junior in college, I’d signed up for a summer study-abroad program, only to see it canceled due to the SARS crisis, and I’d spent my senior year working through the interminable Peace Corps application process, only to be offered a placement in Turkmenistan. I’d been kind of frightened off from the Peace Corps by that point, anyway, so I decided to get to China on my own, as a language student. And so when I exited the Beijing airport late that February night, relieved to have spotted a Starbucks in the terminal (China couldn’t be that different, right?), I climbed onto a bus with the rest of the students bound for the CET Academic Program dorm at the Beijing Institute of Education, my home for the next six months.

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Feature photo: Me (second from right) and other CET Beijing students/roommates at Tiananmen Square, a day or two after I arrived in China, February 2005.