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Tom Helde :: Born on top of a mountain outside Chengdu, baby Tom was sent back to the States after his mother died. He returned to China at age 4 and grew up in Changsha, Hunan province, where his father was a YMCA director, and where the family frequently dodged civil war. After returning to the U.S. as a high school student, he received his Ph.D. in history from Yale and went on to have a long and distinguished teaching career at Georgetown University.
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Bunny Stevenson :: At the family home in Qingdao a Chinese amah would coo "My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean" to Bunny as she rocked her to sleep. After school in the United States, Bunny married a doctor and found herself China-bound once again. The couple raised a family in China as the Japanese occupation raged around them.
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Charlie Roberts, Miriam Lee, Joyce Roberts :: The Roberts kids grew up alongside Tom Helde in Changsha. They repeatedly experienced banditry and civil war, and their family home was destroyed several times. Charlie returned to teach for a semester in his home town of Changsha in 1987.
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Elsa Allgood Porter, Rita Allgood Tubbs :: Children of the principal of the Kuling American School, Rita and Elsa didn't have to be shipped off to boarding school: they were already there. Their favorite activity was sneaking out of the school grounds to the nearby Chinese village to feast on Chinese steamed buns their parents forbid them to eat.
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BJ Rugh Elder :: BJ began her childhood in Changsha, where her father ran Yale-in-China, an educational and medical program established by Yale University. As the Japanese invaded, Yale-in-China and the Rugh family had to move to Yuanling, deep in the Hunan province. But even here, air raids became a routine part of daily life. BJ's memoir of her childhood years, The Oriole's Song, was recently published by Eastbridge.
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Sydney Thomson Brown :: In her father’s extensive black and white home movies, little Sydney frolics in the snow with her sister Nancy, and brothers Jim and John. But 1927 brought the upheaval of China literally to their doorstep in Nanking, on a day forever etched in the family memory.
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