A trailblazer's love affair with China

Over 40 years, Taiyuan, Shanxi province, became a city that David Edgren and his American family could never quite leave.

One day in 1984, Andy Edgren, 13, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, returned home from summer camp to find out that his world was about to be turned upside down. "We're moving to China," his father David Edgren, 42, announced.

In those days the idea of working in China would have been highly exotic in the minds of most Americans. After all, it was only five years earlier that China and the US established diplomatic ties, and Andy was born in 1971, the year that ping-pong diplomacy made its mark on the world, and the year before president Richard Nixon visited China, putting in motion the political detente that ensued.

The Edgrens turned out to be trailblazers who paved the way for many other Americans to travel to China to find out what the big deal was. Indeed, over 40 years Edgren has now traveled to China more than 40 times and has brought over 50 Americans to travel, study and teach in the country.

"My dad always said, 'China is in our blood, China is in our hearts,'" Andy says. Educational and cultural exchanges between the countries are critical, he says, and he continues to tell his compatriots that if they wish to know about China they should travel there to experience it for themselves.