My father might have actually stayed on the farm for his entire life, except that his grandfather saw something in him and told him at the age of six that he was going to attend school, an uncommon path for the people of his village. The schools my father attended were largely run by Western missionaries. So embedded in his educational experience was the flavor of encounter between East and West. He writes about this school situation,

Every semester there were prizes for good behavior, the best grades and the best all around and I was the one to get them all. This impressed my grandfather who would receive these prizes from me in a covetous manner and then store them away. They were usually pens and ink stamps, all of excellent quality. This prize winning may in fact have created good fortune for my whole life. My grandfather evidently thought I was smart enough and decided to support me for higher education, a privilege no family member had ever had up until then.

So these school experiences set the course for my father's international perspective because in high school he recalls one day a rather defining moment. He writes, "One day I met a woman with an umbrella. She was wearing a very colorful blue and white dress. As she walked near me, I noticed that she had a high nose, grayish hair and blue eyes. It was the first time in my life that I had encountered a non-Chinese person. Later, I learned that she was a missionary from America. I was determined at that moment to see the country that this exotic woman had come from." So, here in this defining moment was the beginning of an adventure which led some years later to a new life in America.

Following high school, my father entered Yenching University which was also an American missionary operated university affiliated with Harvard in the Beijing area. This was a time of great flowering for my father in his view of the world. He wrote,

Operating under the American flag in China on that beautiful campus, a large scale experiment was being carried out concerning the clash between an integration of two diverse cultures, East and West. The faculty were Americans with other faculty from England, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, France, Canada and Germany.

The influence of American missionaries on many Chinese students cannot be underestimated. One of the most important influences on my father was Alice Boring, a biology teacher who convinced my father that it might be possible for him to study medicine. He recounts a conversation with her during which she said, "But of course you can study medicine. You can do pre-med and you could get into medical school." My father had been studying physics and mathematics, entertaining various ideas about what his life's work might be. But he writes in terms that are rather prophetic future career:

While China had developed a medical system," he writes, "based on philosophy which expanded as empirical experience, China had never developed a real, scientific anatomical medicine because of the deep-rooted, Confucian belief that the body is holy and should not be dissected. But it became clear," he writes further, "that I was going to study Western medicine. The lack of medical knowledge made the people of China suffer from epidemics, plagues, and all sorts of infectious diseases. People in those days were virtually dying like flies due to disease, poor hygiene and inadequate nutrition. I thought seriously that I would like to become a physician. What a noble profession.