Whilst writing down these memories for the first time since leaving China I found myself immersed once more in the busy atmosphere of the lecture halls and classrooms, the canteen full of the chatter and clatter of noisy, cheerful students and the comparative quiet of the countryside where I visited my students and the farm of my little "Hope Project" daughter Cai Zheng. It is all as present and alive to me now as on that dull November day when I left my home in Nanyang for the last time.

Maria Linnemann was born in 1947 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on her mother's way to England, where she grew up and studied. She studied piano, violin and conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London, qualifiing later as a teacher of Music and English. Since 1971 she has lived mainly in Germany, where she soon discovered her love for the classical guitar. Today she is an internationally published composer as well as a teacher of music and English. She describes teaching as her great passion. From 2001 to 2006 she livied and worked in Henan Province in China as Professor of English, From time to time she profitted from her musical background when handling a text of one of the latest hits in the international charts, or when performing on request at an annual university concert. She describes the years in China as the most valuable experience and greatest learning curve of her life.