A Drifting Soul: Lost in Chinese, Mongolian, and English

In the early 1980s, a Han Chinese woman began to work in a small health center in Jalaid Banner, a pastoral area in the northeast of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. She was warmly welcomed by the local Mongolians and would become a popular midwife who helped deliver about 80 percent of babies in that area. Later, she became a staff member at the Population and Family Planning Office, promoting the "One Child Policy" among the ethnic Mongolians. Years later, although she could barely speak the local language, she married a Mongolian. Their mixed marriage was widely supported by neighbors.