While teaching English Composition to students at Qingdao University in China during the 1999-2000 school year I assigned students to write essays about themselves and their families. The essays were very descriptive, so I began copying some of them to send to family and friends. As the number of collected essays grew, I decided to publish them. Each student gave me written permission to include them in this book. In turn, after returning to the United States and publishing the book I sent each of my 135 students a copy of the book. After nearly 20 years, I read these essays with fond remembrance of my teaching time in China. The essays are insightful and may in the future serve as a reminder of how China was some years earlier.