Voluntary Exile -- My Life in Xinjiang

Date
Tue April 17th 2012, 4:15pm
Event Sponsor
Center for East Asian Studies
Location
Philippines Conference Room, Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
Voluntary Exile -- My Life in Xinjiang
Speaker:

CEAS Colloquium

Margaret Jinyun Sun Retired English Language Teacher, College of Foreign Languages, Xinjiang University

Lynne Joiner, author of Honorable Survivor, will introduce Professor Sun.

Raised in Shanghai, Margaret Jinyun Sun volunteered to work in Xinjiang in 1956, where she was assigned work as a green grocer in Hami.  In the early 1960s due to having 'complicated overseas connections' she was fired and remained unemployed for 16 years (1962-1978).  With Deng Xiaoping's opening to west and Four Modernizations in 1978, she moved to Urumqi and recommended herself to the English Department of Xinjiang University, beginning her career as a teacher, finally serving as a Professor at the College of Foreign Languages, Xinjiang University.  In this talk Professor Sun will discuss her arrival in Xinjiang, her experiences as a teacher, and her reflections on how life in Xinjiang has changed.

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Lynne Joiner, author of Honorable Survivor, will introduce the speaker. After a 25-year career in broadcast journalism, Lynne Joiner’s first book, HONORABLE SURVIVOR: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America and the Persecution of John S. Service received the 2010 Douglas Dillon Award for distinguished writing about American diplomacy. Joiner holds an M.F.A. degree in broadcast journalism from U.C.L.A. and received her B.A. in English Literature from Cornell University. She also attended Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and the Taipei Language Institute. She speaks what she calls “survival” Chinese and French.

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