Why I came to China
Doug Brown
June 7, 2025
We taught our last classes on Wednesday. It was difficult to say goodbye to the students. They are such good students and good people. I love watching how they interact with each other. We have taught over 700 students this school year.
When we decided to come back to China again to teach, I was
a little worried that the excitement and the adventure would be diminished
because we had already taught in China six years ago. That worry never came
true. I loved each aspect of being here again. We were very fortunate with our
teaching situation at Xi’an Jiaotong University. Our schedule was such that we
were able to travel all over China.
Dr. Feng is the Dean over us at the University. He and his
family have been so good to us. We have taken several trips including overnight
trips with them. The trips have been to places that would be difficult or
impossible to do by ourselves. The highlights have been to his hometown to meet
his parents and to his wife’s hometown to meet her family.
We love traveling and exploring China, eating the food etc. but by far the best part of being here is teaching our students. We talk a lot about how we are here to bring light into their lives and hopefully we do that. What we really fail to talk about is how much joy, light and goodness that they bring into our lives.
The students shared sayings that they learned from their grandparents:
“She didn’t just survive the storms—she taught us to dance in the rain.”
“Darkness leaves when you choose to be the light.”
“We’re not just farming the land—we’re farming the future.”
Priceless opportunities for us to
learn so much from our 1st year master's degree students.
We loved having several family members come to visit us this week. We had such an amazing trip exploring China.
