Hello! Welcome to my web home.
I’m a rare species you’ll ever meet:
I taught high school English in China and Mandarin Chinese in America. 10+ yr in China. 20+ yr in America.
And I’ve just accomplished my goal of writing my book in English my second language, The Red Sandals, a memoir (120,000 words). The idea came to me in 1999 when I was a full-time public high school teacher of ESL and Mandarin Chinese in San Francisco. It took me 20 years to complete. the book. I did not have a co-author, let alone a ghost writer, as most Chinese new immigrant memoir authors did with their English writer spouse.
Every single word in my book is by my own hand and from my own mind. You will probably notice my unique writing style, some nickname as “Chinglish”. But my memoir is time- and audience-approved — people LOVED my stories over the years during my public readings, Open-Mic’s, writers’ critique groups, workshops and conferences. My book was “snatched up” by the first publisher I pitched to, sparing me the daunting task of writing a 60-page “pledging my allegiance” book proposal to a literary agent! Yes.
From a born-unwanted peasant girl in China’s deep mountains to winning the Grand Prize in San Francisco Writing Contest, my life is about resilience, survival and never-give-up.
My story is also about four generations of unwanted girls in my family surviving China’s female genocidal culture:
My mother pushed a heavy pinewood washboard against her pregnant belly trying to abort me. I was raised by my peasant grandmother with a pair of three-inch bound feet, who had once thrown her own newborn daughter into urine pot to drown because she wanted a gold-valued boy. When, twenty-five years later, my own daughter was born, my father-in-law pressured me to have my infant daughter lethally injected and killed so I could try for a boy to carry his family tree.
As a small child, I survived the world’s worst manmade famine, when over 35 million peasants died of starvation after no more grass, tree leaves or bark left to eat. Watery millet soup was my staple baby food as an infant after my mother left me when I was two months old. I endured family neglect and abuse, brushed with multiple death and lived through near-fatal diseases, and Mao’s atrocious Cultural Revolution. At age of eight, I was sent to the faraway city of Taiyuan to live as a Chinese Cinderella, waiting on my abusive parents and two younger brothers.
My writing has won the following awards:
The Grand Prize in 2017 San Francisco Writing Contest sponsored by San Francisco Writers Conference.
First Place in Redwood Writers Memoir Contest in October 2015 by California Writers Club.
True Grit Award; Mt Hermon Christian Writers Conference, April 2014 .
Second Place in Jack London Writers Contest of CWC on March 24, 2007.
How did I miraculously make it this far in life? I tell it all in my book. While waiting for my book to be published soon, I’ll post some sample chapters for you (Chapter 1 Book Preview.)
Something else I’d like you to know about me:
I’m dearly loved dearly by two species: kids and dogs.
By trade, and by heart, I’m a classroom teacher with passion for teaching and compassion for kids of all ages. Despite my disheartening experiences of teaching in the chaotic inner city San Francisco’s public schools, my heart is in classroom teaching.
That’s why I also wrote 400-page of Basic Mental Math for Kids, aiming to teach America’s young kids to do math in their heads and calculate everyday money without using an electronic calculator.
I’d like to help because I’m very grateful to my beloved new home country, beautiful America, as a proud American citizen since 1999.
I can’t help but worry about America’s future. It’s becoming a beautiful mansion with a leaking foundation — tens of thousands of eighteen-year-olds have been “graduated” every year, for decades now, as semi illiterate, their math level at the second-grade level, and their reading skills at the fifth-grade level.
I am very interested in discussing with you the following topics:
- Languages;
- Culture;
- Education
Pick my brain, please.