Louise Edwards ‘16, Taigu Fellow

Smog hung low on the busy highway as we made our way to Beijing’s Haidian District where I’d start my language training. Yet as my Mandarin skills progressed, I found that what was hardest for me about living in Beijing was not the common complaints of traffic, noise, and pollution. What I missed most was the LGBTQ community at Oberlin.

Louise Edwards ‘16, Taigu Fellow

Teaching oral English at Shanxi Agricultural University, I’m often thinking of ways for my students to practice their speaking. Sometimes as their homework I ask them to send me voice messages on the app Wechat — one of the most common messaging apps in China. In one of these assignments, I asked students to tell me a story that their parents or grandparents often told them.