Chapter 2: Walking Between Two Worlds: My Cross-Cultural Experience in Academia

In this chapter, I recount my 27-year academic journey toward becoming a Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in China, the United States, and Canada. I present my narrative in chronological order, beginning with my childhood and teenage years, that were spent in both urban surroundings and on air force bases and involved my first encounters with the English language. I then describe the end of the Cultural Revolution and the corresponding resumption of university entrance exams, which both effected a dramatic change in Chinese people’s attitudes toward knowledge and provided me with an opportunity to first learn and then teach English in a Chinese university for the next 18 years. Finally, I delineate my cross-cultural experiences in North America, first in the United States as a visiting scholar and then in Canada as a graduate student and university faculty member, including the frustrations, confusion, and struggles I encountered along the way. These invaluable life experiences have prompted me to rethink the differences in values and ideologies between East and West, to reconstruct my identity as a Chinese female scholar in Western academia, and to re-examine the meaning of teaching versus learning in these two very different contexts. This journey, although challenging and demanding, has also been rewarding and satisfying, and has helped me to formulate my philosophy of what makes a good teacher, no matter who they are or what and where they teach.