Chinese Lessons: An American mother teaches her children how to be Chinese in China - Softcover

Patti Waldmeir is an award-winning author and journalist. She has spent nearly forty years working as a reporter and columnist for the Financial Times, reporting from Ghana; Zambia; Nigeria; London; South Africa; Washington, DC; Shanghai; and now Chicago. Raised in Detroit, Waldmeir graduated with honors from the University of Michigan and went on to win a Marshall Scholarship to earn her master’s degree at Cambridge University.

Waldmeir’s previous award-winning book, Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of a New South Africa, chronicled the peace deal between white and black in South Africa and the rise of Nelson Mandela. Her latest focuses on a more personal issue. When Waldmeir adopted two Chinese daughters, she decided to move the family to Shanghai to help them keep close to their Chinese heritage. Chinese Lessons is a story of identity, race and culture, told through the prism of family.

"Waldmeir is a truly amazing wordsmith, and her book is the most 'real' about adoption, and about the amazing journey we adoptive parents go on, which I have had the privilege to read (and I have read them all I think!)" --Carma Elliot, CMG OBE, former UK Consul General Shanghai

"In her well meaning attempt to provide her adopted Chinese daughters with "a profound and deep, warts-and-all knowledge of their homeland," Waldmeir has written a witty, hilarious, soul-searching, and heartfelt account, a riveting exploration of what it means to be born on one continent and to grow up on another." --Karin Evans, author of "The Lost Daughters of China"

"A heartwarming memoir that every adoptive family should read. Patti Waldmeir's attempts to raise her American-raised, China-born daughters in Shanghai is a cross-cultural romp that raises some very important questions--what it means to be a parent? what it means to be born into one race, and raised by another?" --Mei Fong, author of "One Child: Story of China's Most Radical Experiment."

"Patti Waldmeir is one of the great foreign correspondents of our times. In this book, she turns the lens on herself to tell the saga of highly-accomplished, never-married, middle-aged white woman who crossed an ocean to create a family. It's a story of abandonment, adoption, identity, race and culture-- and how these concepts and boundaries have a way of going blurry in the modern world." --Paul Taylor, former executive vice president, Pew Research Center

"This is not just some average, expat-style memoir... As a long-time journalist at the Financial Times, and its former Shanghai correspondent, Chinese Lessons delivers much more than its title. It's sentimental yes; equally, it's informative and explores timely questions on race, identity and family." --Asian Review of Books

"Can Chineseness be created out of thin air? Patti Waldmeir and her adopted Chinese daughters have lived this question in both America and China. In this deeply personal book, Waldmeir writes with sensitivity and insight about the fluidity of identity and the meaning of place." --Eric Liu, author of "A Chinaman's Chance"