生于中国 Born in China

　　Sons and daughters of early-twentieth century missionaries, these Americans grew up far from home in a country fractured by chaos.  They lived with a foot in two cultures, speaking Chinese as a first language and growing to adulthood as war and unrest took over the country and the world. When they finally arrived in their “home” country, they had to learn how to become Americans. 

　Filmmaker John Helde knew for years his white American father was born in China – but beyond that, his dad’s past was a mystery.  Born in China, the companion book to the documentary Made in China, tells the story of expatriate American kids growing up in pre-Mao China, and the cultural and political experiences that shaped their lives.  
　Setting off a journey to uncover his father’s childhood story, Helde encounters a cast of thoughtful and resilient Americans whose ties to China made them who they are. Mixing interviews, letters, photographs with Helde’s warm narrative voice, Born in China paints a vivid portrait of a unique American experience – and one son’s quest to understand it all.

　John Helde is the award-winning filmmaker behind the documentaries Made in China and Field Work: A Family Farm.  An accomplished writer, film editor and director, his documentaries and short narrative films have been exhibited at festivals internationally, as well as on the Documentary Channel and Hulu.com.  He is based in Seattle, where he is at work on a new feature film. 

Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The China Connection
Chapter 2: China-born Americans
Chapter 3: An End and a Beginning
Chapter 4: An American Child in China
Chapter 5: Changsha
Chapter 6: The Missionary Parents
Chapter 7: BJ Elder in Changsha
Chapter 8: War and Warlords
Chapter 9: Finding “Home”
Chapter 10: Chengdu
Chapter 11: Coming to America
Chapter 12: The Mountain

　For as long as I can remember, I’ve known my father was born in China. The part of his life I experienced, though, centered on the suburban home where I grew up – a very American kind of life. He didn’t talk about his childhood much, and I paid little attention to his China past. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that a few chance discoveries brought his childhood to the surface. One day, when I was back at the family home for a visit – I happened to pick a book off my parents’ shelf, a memoir called Golden Inches, by Grace Service, a China missionary of the 1920’s. Inside, I discovered a photo of my grandparents George and Ruth Helde on the way to Sichuan, and the story of my father’s birth on a remote mountaintop known as “Behludin.” Next, I came across a stack of photos I’d never seen, an album of my father’s life as an American boy in China. The pictures felt like a window into another world, one that looked exciting and adventurous – living in a Chinese house, traveling by sedan chair through rugged countryside, traversing the Yangtze by house boat. For the first time, I realized just how little I knew about my father’s childhood – and, how little I knew my father. 
My childhood was unremarkable by contrast. I grew up in the 1970’s, in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. My father Tom was a professor of history at Georgetown University, and my mother Joan a librarian at Georgetown. In the eyes of my child self, these were givens, and it felt like our life had been that way forever. After I was born, our family remained in one house, and not a lot changed. Our most exciting trip (for a nine-year-old at least) was when we navigated the country in our VW bus one scalding summer to visit my grandmother in Southern California. We never traveled to China, or to any overseas destination. After college, I moved to New York City to start working in the film business. Then, my wife and I became West-coast dwellers, relocating to Seattle, the biggest change I’d made in my life. Years later, flipping through my father’s China photos, I felt a sense of urgency: If I was ever going to understand his childhood, or how China made him who he was, I thought, I would have to start now. 
I decided to come back with a camera, and see if I could get my father to talk about China. Quietly, a journey began, one that ultimately took me across the U.S., looking for people who shared his experiences, and through China, from Shanghai to Sichuan, in search of where the story began for him. As I progressed, I discovered not just one story of a unique childhood, but a broader window onto a group of unusual people who had, through their childhood experiences, formed a particular perspective on home, identity, and what it means to be American. 

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