What can be said about the author Gabriele Markarian, that she can't express much better herself?

Prologue:

"Shall we go to China for a year?" A question like this you don't ask yourself very often. But this is what happened to me and my family, and we moved to China where we were attracted by an offer of employment as teachers at a German school. Unprepared as we were, we knew only one thing is certain: In China everything will be different. The year in China was an impressive experience, that we report of in our emails and diary entries: of the contract with a school that never really got going and of our successful search for an alternative task; of the change from the mega-city of Tianjin (14-million-inhabitants) in north-east China to a village of 500 souls named Shangjiang in the subtropical highlands in the south-west; of our work as English teachers in this very remote rural region – and how the stay in China came to an abrupt end. With its reports and images this book invites you to relive our curiosity, our wonder, the excitement, but also our occasional uncertainty and defensive reactions. We would like to share the sympathy we felt for the – in our eyes – strange people despite of the language boundaries. The book takes you into a region of China where common tourism is unknown.