Family China Trips

Since the opening of China in 1980, our family was offered many opportunities to visit the country. In 1985, I accepted an offer from Tsinghua University in Beijing to teach a course there during the early part of the summer. This turned out to be the best trip we took together as a family, not just because the arrangements made by Professor Liu Danqiao were so good,  but also because our children had just reached the right ages for this kind of trip. Janice and I later realized that the ages of our children were an important factor in how much they learned and gained from their travel. As a family, you only realize the results much later. Margaret was 16 and Steven had just turned 14. We did a lot that summer! The pictures below show some of the scenes from the begining of a nice summer! The first picture is of Margaret taking a rest at the airport! Then we landed in Shanghai for the first time after Shanghai was opened. The third picture was when we visited Fudan University there. The last two pictures were taken in Suzhou, a city not far from Shanghai. One includes our host for the summer, Professor Liu, and the other shows the the famous Tiger Hill Pargoda. We were there in the last part of May, 1985.