Her life's true path leads to China

There is a rumor in my mother's family that we are direct descendants of Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol conqueror. In reality, we are most likely related to Khan's General Subutai, a military genius who orchestrated the Mongol's clean sweep of 32 nations.

With cunning, diplomacy, and the use of huge stone-throwers, Subutai is said to have overrun more territory than any other general in history, and, along with Genghis Khan, paved the way for the opening of direct contact between East Asia and the West.

The Mongols left the seed of Asia inside Europe. They also left traces of my genetic heritage - the almond eyes, high cheekbones, and fiery spirit. These traces still rule my imagination and my blood, even though I am blond and blue-eyed.

In a few weeks I'll follow Subutai's footsteps to China. With patience, diplomacy, and online dictionaries, I will dust off my Mandarin and follow a new Silk Road leading from America to Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, the powerhouses of China's burgeoning economy.

As a new Ph.D., I plan to teach media production for University of Colorado Denver at the International College of Beijing, exploring opportunities for close East-West encounters. But I leave Philadelphia - a city I've lived in and cherished, along with my children, for 19 years - knowing that every great empire has a beginning and an end, every civilization an arc of power.

China appears to be in ascendancy, especially Beijing, where I'm headed. Philadelphia is - well - struggling.

For the last two years, I have looked at the want ads here. Several U.S. positions (almost all not in Philadelphia) in both academe and the private sector were canceled or defunded, even after I was tapped as a finalist.

On the way to the city, I drive past ships mothballed, pipes and gears grinding to rust, whole neighborhoods boarded up and beset by fear and trash, smokestacks like organ pipes gone silent. I read the jobless reports. Four of the major Philadelphia counties have jobless rates paralleling or exceeding the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In America, private nonfarm employers "initiated 1,624 mass layoff events in the second quarter of 2011 that resulted in the separation of 261,346 workers from their jobs for at least 31 days."

(This is supposed to be good news, a decrease over the last year.)

In my neighborhood of Rutledge, people are just grateful to be working and sending their kids to school. But the ennui and sheer frustration I've felt in Philadelphia trying to find my place has finally reached a breaking point. It has given me wings.

Once again I am free to reclaim my status as a barbarian at the gates. The strange affinities I felt long ago for China - the draw to study the language and culture, my time as a Mandarin student in Taiwan three decades ago, my closeness to a Chinese family that "adopted me" as their own in Taipei while the horrors of the Cultural Revolution raged on across the Formosa Straits, walled off from America - all of these affinities are about to pay off.

Perhaps I didn't realize it, but looking back, the passion with which I wrote that application letter for my job in China must have come from a not-so-secret pool of anger - a woman longing to fly, to beat her breast in grief at the desolation and confinements of her land.

China certainly won't be Shangri-la. I will be among 600,000 foreigners, a little more than 71,000 of them Americans, a tiny minority living in a country of 1.3 billion people. But our numbers are growing each year.

Moreover, I realize that China is desperately polluted, its sanitation lax, its income distributions unequal, its levels of corruption and resistance to economic reciprocity and free speech difficult for a Westerner to grasp. At the same time, the opening of China is great news not just for educators and students, but for all Americans. Though it is commonly assumed that we are fighting for our economic lives and that China has gobbled up our factories and manufacturing jobs, America actually has more to gain by steadfastly breaking down technical, business, and spiritual barriers to the Far East. We are innovators and China needs us. We need them. All of us will do best building bridges of innovation and prosperity together.

Though I don't know exactly how it will happen, I do know this: The time of wall-building is over. I will leave Philadelphia and say goodbye to my children, my home, my neighbors. For at least a while, I will become a warrior again, and the future will come to me with galloping clarity. China beckons - I'm ready to take the risk.