Hello, readers of St. Louis Chinese American News! My name is Molly Patterson and I am a St. Louis native, currently living in a town in China's southwest: Yaan, Sichuan. I have been here a year teaching at a
high school and will spend my second year teaching at the agricultural university. I studied Mandarin at Carlton College in the States, so I luckily had a good language base when I came, which has allowed me to make friends with those who do not speak English as well as those who do (though it took me months to even begin understanding the Sichuan accent, with its colorful intonation, pronunciation, and vocabulary).

My town has a population of about 150,000 and is surrounded by steep, mist-shrouded mountains and swaying bamboo. There are more kinds of vegetables here than I thought existed in the world. The eight-county region of Yaan is locally famous as being the "birthplace of the panda" (the place where a French explorer first "discovered" them in the 19th century) as well as several crucial river-crossing moments during the Long March. The town itself is right at the crossroads of Chinese development: high rise buildings are sprouting up in the valley, but it's still first and foremost an agricultural area, with at least as many people walking down the streets with bamboo-weave baskets full of veggies for sale as town residents. Most days, I go for a run in the countryside, or up one of the smaller mountains near the university.

Molly is on the left and her mother in the center and a friend at the Great Wall.

For the last year, I have been sending an email to an increasingly growing group of family, friends, and friends of family and friends about my experiences here. Recently, it was recommended to me that I share my updates with St. Louis Chinese American News. I'm thrilled to do so. If you feel like you're jumping in in the middle of my saga, I'm afraid it's because you are. I hope you enjoy!

Molly Patterson