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I was born in the Wiltshire town of Swindon. My father
is a Methodist minister and my mother is a teacher. I
have two brothers.
I grew up in London, Alsace in France, Plymouth and
Coventry. I applied to study Chinese at university largely
because very few people did so back then. In 1980, during
my interview at Leeds University, I remember one of
the lecturers telling me it was hardly a golden period
in Chinese history, and that I shouldn’t expect
to get a job with a degree in Chinese studies. He was
right, of course. It would take years for China to emerge
from the grim sixties and seventies to become the economic
force that it is now. After studying Chinese at Leeds
I was given a scholarship to go to Harvard University
for a year, where I studied more about China.
When I returned to England I joined the BBC world service
and became a journalist (any resemblance to the Corporation
where Robin works is, of course, purely coincidental).
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I have been back and forth to China since I was 19,
first as a student in Shanghai, then as an English teacher
in the subtropical coastal province of Fujian, then
based in Beijing as the China correspondent for The
Times.
In 1992 I married James Miles, who was then the Beijing
correspondent for the BBC. For the past six years we
have been living in Beijing again. This time James is
the Beijing correspondent of The Economist. We have
one son and two daughters who think China is normal
and Britain is exotic.
Every year the family returns to Britain for two months
to escape the smog, experience the colour green again
and invade the peace of grandparents.
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