Made in China: Forty Years of Change, Choice, and Consequence | Sabina Brady
This article is presented in English first, followed by the Chinese translation. | 本文前半部分为英文全文，完整中文翻译在文章后半部分。
The very first word that came to mind when I heard Sabina Brady's (白思南) story was "pioneer." To this day, many, myself included, continue to benefit from the foundations she laid in Beijing all those years ago, most of us without ever realizing it. That understanding came to me through years of working alongside the Western Academy of Beijing. I have always deeply respected the school and the tremendous value it brings to the community. It was only recently that I learned Sabina is in fact one of its key founders. And co-founding WAB, it turns out, is just one of the meaningful contributions Sabina has made in her forty-plus years here in China.
Throughout this time, Sabina has given much to China, while China, in turn, has profoundly shaped her. Now, let's hear her story in her own words.
Psychotherapist, Director of CandleX
Made in China: Forty Years of Change, Choice, and Consequence
Adapted from a talk by Sabina Brady for 我们 for Women, Beijing, June 4, 2026
Author: Sabina Brady
Editorial Feedback: Xiaojie Qin, Sharon Liu
Time: Aug 28, 2026
All photos courtesy of Sabina Brady
In 1979, just out of college and in my early twenties, I turned down a law school acceptance to take a one-year job in Beijing for USD 3,000, round-trip airfare, room and board, and a bicycle. I had never lived abroad before. My Chinese, despite what I had implied in my resume, amounted to one intensive summer course at Middlebury College taken right before I left for China.
I had been hired privately by a US diplomat, the deputy chief of mission at the newly established American Embassy in Beijing, to coordinate his household entertainment and manage the staff: a butler, a cook, and two cleaning ayis, none of whom spoke English. I also watched over his children and taught at the tiny Embassy school of less than a dozen students. It would just be for one year. By then, I should have more of an idea of what I wanted to do with my life. At least that was my plan.
The Beijing of 1979 would be unrecognizable today. It was before the fancy hotels, a prosperous middle class, and high-speed everything. It was much poorer and more tightly controlled, but where surveillance was human rather than digital. The advantage of my being privately employed was that unlike my diplomat employer, I was not bound by all the rules that governed his movements and activities. In my off-hours I went where he could not: on my bicycle, into neighborhoods and situations I had no real business being in, with language skills barely adequate for what I kept attempting anyway. His sole request was that I not embarrass him or the Embassy.
In one of my suitcases, I had packed my flute and a collection of chamber music scores. They became my entree into the world of students at the Central Conservatory of Music. Among China's most gifted young musicians, they knew the western classical repertoire intimately, having found ways to listen to recordings despite years of restricted access. What they lacked was the chance to actually play it themselves, especially chamber music. My scores gave them that. Every week we made music together across divides that almost everything else around us was designed to maintain. Through our music, friendships formed, and I began to understand something about what China held beneath its surface that no briefing or guidebook had prepared me for.
At the end of my year, I discovered that I did not want to leave. I did not know precisely why, but something had formed, not a plan or a vision, but a strong attachment to a place that was stranger and more compelling than anything I had encountered before. I was not ready to put it all down, but my application to stay on as a teacher at a Chinese institute was rejected. I had no choice but to go home.
Back in the US, I was now considered something of a China expert by US companies eager to understand a country they wanted to do business with. My expertise rested on one year of lived China experience and now just-functional Mandarin Chinese. The irony was not lost on me. Leveraging this newly acquired ‘expert’ status, I wrangled an offer to set up and run the China office of a Chicago-based multinational corporation.
A little over three years after my reluctant departure in the late summer of 1980, I was on a plane back to Beijing, this time to stay.
The life that followed was anything but a straight line, shaped by moments I did not always choose, at junctures I did not anticipate, and by decisions that were either mine to make or, by default, would be made for me. In what follows, I explore some of those moments, what they felt like, what they cost, and what they returned, sometimes years later, unexpectedly, and often when it mattered most.
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The first came in the late 1980s. By then I had earned my stripes as a corporate executive, VP level, directing Greater China operations and navigating the politics of two global acquisitions and a merger, while achieving China sales results that drew the attention of the new global CEO and board. I had also married and become a mother of two, a son in 1985 and then a daughter three years later. Both were born at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMC), long before any joint-venture western hospitals existed, the same hospital where my husband's two younger sisters had also been born in the early 1950s. My husband arrived in China as a small toddler just after the country’s founding in 1949. He was the son of a world-renowned Filipino-Overseas Chinese scientist who gave up an international career for the socialist cause, and a Caucasian American mother who had never traveled to Asia before. Of mixed heritage and steeped in the glories of New China, my husband viewed himself as Chinese, although he was never quite seen as such by others.
Left: Cutting the wedding cake, Washington, D.C., December 1982.
Right: An early autumn outing at the Ming Tombs with our two children, early 1990s.
Our son Joseph was bright but learned differently, in ways the Beijing of that time had no capacity to accommodate. Fully bilingual, and having thrived in Chinese nursery and kindergarten, his first years in primary school were brutal, for him and for us. We faced three options: homeschool, return to the US where resources and extended family awaited, or create in Beijing the kind of school he needed, knowing it did not yet exist.
The rational case for returning to the US was strong. Joseph's needs were real and urgent. I had no background in education, no experience in setting up, much less running, schools, and China had no regulatory framework permitting what we were imagining. My corporate career would not survive the type of school project I was contemplating. The sensible choice was clear.
And yet, again, I was unwilling to leave. So, anxiously, with full awareness that I might be wrong, and knowing that while I might revisit this choice, neither Joseph nor I would ever be able to return to where we started, I jumped.
Before I left my corporate role, I did one thing that became the first manifestation of something I have tried to live by since: that the measure of what we build is in how well it continues to thrive after we leave. After securing formal board approval, I spent months mentoring a Chinese national colleague to take over, ensuring that what had been built would continue in hands that were perhaps even more capable than my own. Leaving my corporate career was, I must admit, its own particular kind of loss.
Then came the effort to establish what would become the Western Academy of Beijing, or WAB. As I grappled with my son’s schooling needs, Beijing’s fast-growing foreign community was facing its own crisis: a dearth of available school places for their children. The obvious solution was to build and expand on Beijing’s small number of existing diplomatic mission schools. These schools each offered their own national curriculum and pedagogy, with preferential placement given to the children of their own diplomats and nationals. But, we did not want that. We dreamed of a truly international, learner-centered school, independent of any single national system or its pedagogy, grounded in China, and open to all learners. The surging demand for school places, particularly from both diplomatic and non-diplomatic national families beyond the five English-speaking missions, gave us the opportunity to pursue just that. Starting in May 1993, despite having no campus, funding, license, or regulatory framework permitting what we were attempting, we built a diverse community of prospective parents, educators, business executives, diplomatic leaders, and local and central officials. Together, we worked out how to meet an urgent shared need in a way that was entirely, and deliberately, our own. The result was a school where all learners were welcome and could thrive, including, finally, my son.
Everything we accomplished required learning how to overcome obstacles we had never imagined, let alone encountered. It meant trusting those around the table to bring what was needed, even in the absence of a clear path forward. Built by people who had never envisioned themselves as school founders, and joined by those who simply shared the dream, WAB worked, and still works over three decades later, not despite the difficulties of its founding but because of them.
Above: Before and after retrofitting WAB’s first home -- the leased facilities (administrative buildings) of a near bankrupt state-owned factory; map of WAB’s location, inside the grounds of the factory, and just outside the northeast 4th Ring Road; preparing the field and laying grass; WAB’s original logo and signage.
Below: Opening Day September 1, 1994, at WAB’s first campus -- ribbon cutting, touring the school with Chinese officials, celebratory banquet; WAB’s name and logo on the main building; children and families.
And so, I left my corporate career, choosing my family and choosing China. Over the years that followed, this same instinct would reassert itself, not identically, but with its own unmistakable rhymes. Each effort left its own mark, often invisible at the time, with the returns, when they came, rarely what I had expected, and sometimes far beyond what I had even dared to imagine.
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After WAB opened its doors in 1994 I began my own consulting, mentoring, and capacity-building work with Chinese NGOs and foundations. I found I loved it, though I set it aside a few years later when I was asked to oversee WAB's new campus design, land acquisition, and build-out. I still have a bamboo hardhat as a memento of those years. Realizing WAB's dream of leaving its rented facilities in a nearly-bankrupt, state-owned factory for a purpose-built home was, again, a whole-of-community effort, making possible the innovative nursery through Grade 12 international school that WAB is today.
WAB’s purpose-built campus and new N-G12 facilities: opening day ribbon cutting in August 2000; laying the foundation stone; topping out celebrations; and WAB’s new logo.
Once WAB’s new campus was built in the early 2000s, I found myself at another of those junctures. WAB no longer needed me in the same way, and I needed a new role and purpose. I had been out of the corporate world too long to go back, and besides, I already knew how to build sales and service networks, negotiate technology transfers, and set up joint ventures. I needed something new, something that carried the same spirit of creative and collaborative problem-solving that WAB had demanded. What came next arrived, as things tend to in my life, from an entirely unexpected direction.
Seemingly out of the blue, I received a call from the donor behind the Clinton Foundation's China HIV/AIDS Initiative. He was looking for a founding country head and had been pointed in my direction by a former colleague of mine from my earlier Washington DC days. We had stayed in touch over the intervening decades through exchanges of news and China visits, though I had no idea he and the donor were close, or that he had recommended me.
My China Office team for the US multinational corporation, Gould Electronics, that later was acquired by AEG, and then Groupe Schneider.
Back in the early 1980s, finding a job that would return me to China had not been easy. Formal bilateral relations had only just been re-established, and the professional pathways into the country were quite limited. I finally found one in early 1981: a position at a Washington DC trade association helping US companies enter China. Two and a half years later, one of the association's member companies hired me to set up and run their China operations from Beijing.
What I could not have known was that the collegial friendship I had formed at that trade association would, over the coming years and without my knowledge, quietly carry news of my work to the Clinton Foundation donor, and lead to a China-based public health opportunity I could never have dreamed of. By the early 2000s, my years building the multinational's China operations and then co-founding WAB had given me the bona fides to make the case for the Clinton Foundation position. I said yes.
I stepped into the role at a time when China was in the middle of a national HIV/AIDS epidemic it had been slow to acknowledge. Its public health infrastructure had no capacity to diagnose, care for, or treat this infectious, life-threatening disease. An HIV diagnosis was a death sentence. The social stigma surrounding it was so severe that sufferers hid their condition, which in turn fueled the epidemic’s spread. In response, the Chinese government invited the Clinton Foundation to help design, pilot, and embed a comprehensive care and treatment system into its public health infrastructure, from the central government down to the village level, covering drug procurement, treatment protocols, and point-of-care diagnosis. If it worked, our partnership would turn a death sentence into a manageable, chronic disease, give sufferers their lives back, and help contain the epidemic.
Our work was challenging. I had no public health background or medical training. My team was a disparate group of Western doctors and nurses with deep expertise in the disease but no China experience. The populations with the highest HIV prevalence came from marginalized and legally vulnerable groups, making access difficult and sensitive. Funding was tight relative to the scale of what needed doing. Our government partners were often visibly uncomfortable with the disease and with our involvement. The travel was relentless, to provinces and villages far from Beijing, including Henan and Hubei in the center, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangxi in the south, and Xinjiang in China’s far northwest. Decisions had to be made without precedent or playbook, and I could not always tell whether what we were doing was working. What kept us going was the clarity of our mission, the human side of the people we treated and gave hope to, and the perceptions of those around them that we helped to change. But did we make a difference?
The Clinton Foundation Health Access Initiative's first program focused on partnering with national governments to address the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. These two Chinese press articles detail some of the Foundation’s work in Yunnan and Henan.
Years later, in a private meeting with the Ministry of Health, we learned that although the Clinton Foundation had contributed far less funding than any other foreign agency, our partnership had achieved the greatest impact for China's HIV/AIDS sufferers and for the prospect of containing the epidemic. What I had not anticipated was what the work gave back to me in relationships built across years of shared effort. They became some of my deepest friendships. This is the kind of return you cannot plan for and do not see coming.
In 2008, I received another invitation I had no obvious qualifications to accept. The China heads of Boeing and Cummins Engine asked me to design, launch, and lead a non-profit public-private consortium focused on the world's two largest carbon emitters, with the purpose of advancing commercial-scale clean energy solutions. It would be funded by US companies, include Chinese ones, and operate in formal partnership with both governments. The commercial sector would lead while the governments would only support, not the other way around. Making this work meant enlisting the most senior leaders across every stakeholder group to facilitate, fund, and formally recognize what we were building. The result was the US-China Energy Cooperation Program, or ECP, formally launched in late 2009 by both countries' presidents at the Great Hall of the People during the newly elected US president's first state visit to China. ECP worked for the same reasons WAB and the Clinton Foundation partnership had worked. People with genuine stakes in a shared purpose, operating under real constraints, making real choices, came together to build something none of them could have built alone. ECP did not survive the deterioration in US-China relations. But for the many years it functioned, its impact was real, and many of the relationships formed remain strong today.
Left: Page 1 of a US-China business magazine article detailing ECP’s success and accomplishments after first full year.
Top, Middle: US President Obama and PRC President Hu Jintao during President Obama’s November 2009 state visit to the PRC where the two presidents jointly announced the formation and bilateral government endorsement of ECP at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Middle: ECP logo.
Right Side, Top: Founding US corporate members of ECP at its inaugural meeting in 2009.
Right Side, Bottom: Major US corporate members at the end of Year 2.
After ECP, I returned full time to the philanthropy sector work I had begun in the 1990s: co-founding a non-profit peer-learning platform to support China’s emerging philanthropic foundations, providing capacity building to Chinese NGOs, and continuing in board and advisory roles across education and civil society. The work was quieter than what had preceded it, and less visible, but no less consequential for those it served. The underlying logic and approach never changed.
Middle: Preparing to say a few remarks at the Beijing celebration of the London Book Fair’s 2024 launch of the English language edition of “Happiness in Being Ordinary” by Yao Li (on left), entrepreneur, philanthropist, educator, and founder of a network of charity vocational schools (I was the chief translator for the book).
Left & Right: Engaging in organizational and educational capacity-building and support work.
Looking back across those thirty-plus years of institution-building and philanthropic work, what strikes me most is not what was built but how. Each time, the work began the same way: find the people who cared, or could be persuaded to care about the problem, bring them together, and trust that what emerged would be better than anything any one of us could do alone. That was as true of a group of Beijing parents with no school to send their children to, as it was of doctors, government officials, and patients trying to stop an epidemic, of energy executives trying to bridge a bilateral divide, or of Chinese foundation leaders and NGO practitioners putting sustained organized philanthropy to work for their country. The communities were different. The problems were different. The ripples each sent outward were different, and often far larger than anyone sitting in those rooms could anticipate. But the approach was always the same. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, without my fully realizing it, those communities became mine as much as I became theirs.
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And then came 2024. I will be brief, because the facts carry more weight than any framing I can add.
In 2024, my son Joseph died suddenly in Suzhou. He was just thirty-eight. He left behind his wife and six-year-old daughter. At the same time. My husband was diagnosed with two metastasized cancers simultaneously.
And then our daughter Sarah, married and living in the US, went into a life-threatening delivery. Both she and her newborn son were still hospitalized when I had to tell her that her brother was dead.
The only way I can describe what it was like to be inside that period is this: there are moments when the weight of what you are holding, for yourself, for others, for everyone who needs you to remain functional, is such that you stop asking whether you are managing and simply manage. I had been in that place once before, but in a different register, when Joseph was young and WAB did not yet exist and retreat felt impossible. This time, it was so much harder, more painful, and final. But something in me still recognized the terrain.
What happened in response, unbidden and over months rather than days, was this. A former Clinton Foundation colleague stepped forward, traveling with me to Suzhou, where my daughter-in-law and her parents, who had been vacationing with my son, were waiting, not knowing how to navigate what came next. For days, she shepherded us through everything involved in recovering and cremating my son in a city largely closed for the Spring Festival holiday: the paperwork, the bureaucracy, the regulations, all of it, while I was barely functional. Friends and former colleagues, even from my corporate years three decades earlier, sent food, made innumerable airport runs, and checked in quietly, and continue to do so even now.
Joseph’s memorial was held at WAB, the school founded because he had needed something that did not yet exist. More than two hundred people came in person; another two hundred joined online. His fourth-grade teacher was master of ceremonies. The IT and communications departments provided technical support. The WAB Elementary School Library was later renamed for him, with a plaque at its entrance that I pass each time I am there. Joseph’s memorial dinner was hosted by a dear friend and colleague of over twenty years, the Chinese founder of the network of charitable vocational schools where I have served as a board member almost since its founding. Fellow board members interceded on my husband’s behalf. The public health community from my Clinton Foundation years and subsequent work in elder care mobilized to ensure my husband had access to the highest level of care in China. He is now cancer free.
Left: Leaving the Suzhou crematorium with Joseph’s ashes on my back, carrying him home to Beijing.
Right: Performance of a Memorial Tribute to Joseph at the close of his memorial, composed and played by Liu Kai (a family friend, professional musician and scholar).
Left: Plaque renaming the WAB Elementary School Library in honor of Joseph.
Right: Inside the library.
For Sarah and her newborn, out of our reach half-way across the world, a former WAB classmate and my cousins rearranged their lives over months to make sure our distance, illness, and grief never left them without family.
The roots held, not because I had engineered them to, but because they were deep and real.
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I cannot offer any assurance that difficulties surmounted always lead to growth, that staying is always better than leaving, or that my choices are the right ones for others. Life’s lessons do not transfer that cleanly. What I can offer instead is this.
Those moments that feel like interruptions to life, those disruptive, unwanted, unplanned junctures that arrive and bend your line near breaking, become the very moments when something real is either built or not. What determines this depends less on the outcome than on the quality of your engagement. Whether you work through the contradictions and pain, sit with the uncertainty, and arrive at a decision that is yours. Or let it be resolved for you.
That is, I think, the difference between a life that holds and accumulates into something, and a life that is simply lived through.
Throughout, I have made choices imperfectly and with no certainty of getting things right. In fact, I have often gotten them wrong. But each time, I have made my choices rooted in this complicated, demanding, irreplaceable place called China. A place not mine by birth but by choice. A place that made the communities, the friendships, the networks, and the dreams possible. And the place that became the bedrock on which I keep finding my way back to myself.
That is what more than forty years in China have built for me. Not the institutions, not the résumé, but the choices that were mine, and the communities that, together, made everything possible, and bearable, and true.
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听到白思南（Sabina Brady）的故事时，我脑海中蹦出的第一个词是“先驱”。直到今天，包括我在内，还有很多人都在收益于她多年前在北京打下的基础——而我们大多数人压根儿不知道这回事。这份切身体会，是我作为合作方，多年为北京京西学校提供心理咨询服务的过程中，一点点感受到的。我一直对这所学校怀有深深的敬意，也敬佩它为社区带来的巨大价值。直到最近我才知道，白思南正是这所学校的核心创始人之一。而参与创办京西学校，还只是她在华四十多年来众多有意义的贡献之一。
这些年里，白思南给予了中国很多，而中国也深刻地塑造了她。现在，让我们听听她亲自讲述自己的故事。
心理咨询师，CandleX 总监
我的“中国制造”：四十年变迁、抉择与因果
本文源自白思南（Sabina Brady）在北京WOMEN活动中的分享，此版本由作者本人撰写调整编辑后发布。
原文英文作者：白思南(Sabina Brady，美国)
翻译：Bryan Liu (刘劭祥) and Qin Xiaojie (秦小杰) with assistance from DeepSeek、Liang-Xia "Kippy" Ye (叶良侠)、Xuemei "Mei" Zheng (郑雪梅)、and Sabina Brady (白思南)
中文译文最终校对：白思南
时间：2026年8月28日
照片由白思南（Sabina Brady）惠允提供
1979年，刚刚大学毕业、二十岁出头的我，放弃了法学院的录取，接受了一份为期一年的北京工作——工作报酬是三千美元，往返机票、食宿和一辆自行车。此前，我从未在国外生活过。至于我的中文，尽管我在简历中暗示我会中文，实则不过是赴华前，在明德学院（Middlebury College）参加了一期暑期强化班而已。
我受刚刚在北京设立的美国驻华大使馆公使私人聘用，为其打理家中的宴客事宜，并管理一支由管家、厨师及两名不谙英语的清洁阿姨组成的服务团队。此外，我还要兼顾照看他的孩子，并在那所只有不到十二名学生的小小使馆学校教书。反正只做一年。届时，我应该会更清楚自己的人生规划。至少，我当时是这般设想的。
1979年的北京，与今日判若两城。那时的北京还没有豪华酒店，没有富裕的中产阶层，亦没有无处不在的"高速与高效"。相较于今远为清贫，管制亦更严，但监控依赖人工而非如今的数字技术。这般就留出了一些缝隙与回旋的余地。而我的私人受雇身份的优势就在于：与身为外交官的雇主不同，彼行止悉受制于各项规章，而我则无此约束。闲暇之时，我去到他无法涉足之地——骑上自行车，穿行于本不该踏入的街巷与境况之中，凭借仅堪应付的中文，我坚持不懈地尝试着一切可能。彼时我的雇主对于我唯一的要求是：不要做出令他或美国大使馆难堪的事情。
继而，我行李箱中的长笛和一摞室内乐乐谱，成了我进入中央音乐学院学生世界的入场券。他们都是中国最有天赋的青年音乐家，对于西方古典曲目了然于心。尽管多年来渠道受限，但他们仍想方设法聆听录音。而他们真正所缺少的，是亲身参与演奏，尤其是演奏室内乐的机会。而我带到中国的乐谱成全了他们的愿望。每星期，我们跨越种种“鸿沟”，一起演奏，而我们周围的一切却都在竭力维系这一割裂。在音乐之中，情谊萌生，我也开始能洞悉中国表象之下所蕴藏的种种，那是任何简报或指南都未能让我为此做好准备的。
临近一年期满，我发现自己并不愿离去。说不清缘由，某种情愫已然滋生：此间并非筹谋或远见，而是一种对于这片土地的深深的羁绊，于我而言既陌生又令人心动，远胜于我所经历之万般。我尚未准备好就此放下这一切，然则，我申请在某中国院校教职的请求却被拒绝了。我别无选择，只能回国。
重返美国后，我俨然被诸多亟盼深入了解中国、拓展对华商业合作的美国企业视为“中国通”。而我的"专长"，不过是在中国生活一年的经历，以及勉强可用的普通话。这其中的荒诞，我自然心知肚明。然而凭借这个新获得的"中国专家"身份，我成功争取到一个把我带回到中国的机会：为一家总部位于芝加哥的跨国公司筹建并运营其中国办事处。
在我于1980年夏末无可奈何地离京三年多之后，我再度登上飞往北京的航班。这一次，我定要留下来。
此后我的人生绝非一条笔直坦途，却由我不曾选择的机遇与始料未及的转折交织而成；亦由或非出自我本心的抉择，或由阴差阳错的命运替我做出的安排所铸就。接下来，我将回溯其中若干时刻：特别是身处其中的感受与付出，以及它们最终回馈予我的一切；此般种种有时数年之后方才悄然而至，虽每每出人意料，但却总是在最紧要的时刻，恰逢其时地降临。
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第一个这样的时刻出现在20世纪80年代末。那时我出任公司副总裁负责大中华区业务，经历了公司两次全球收购和一次合并带来的震荡。此时我已在公司高管岗位上证明了自己，期间我所取得的成绩也引起了新任全球CEO和董事会的关注。而我亦已为人妇，并成为两个孩子的母亲：长子1985年出生，三年后小女降生。那时没有合资的国际医院，两个孩子都出生在北京协和医院。20世纪50年代初我先生的两个妹妹也都出生在同一家医院。新中国成立之初，我先生便随家人来到中国，而彼时的他还是个蹒跚学步的幼童。父亲是一位享誉世界的菲律宾华侨科学家，为了社会主义事业放弃了国外优越的职业生涯；母亲则是一位此前从未到过亚洲的美国白人女性。我先生虽兼具双重血脉，却自幼沐浴在新中国的荣光之中。在他心底，他始终是中国人，但旁人从未完全如此看待他。
左：1982年12月，于华盛顿特区婚礼上切蛋糕。
右：20世纪90年代初，初秋的一天与我们的两个孩子出游十三陵。
我们的儿子Joseph（叶秋实）天资聪颖，却有着异于常人的学习方法，这并非彼时的北京教育体系所能接纳包容。起初精通中英双语的秋实在本地的幼儿园里如鱼得水，但步入小学最初的几年，对他乃至我们全家而言却都异常煎熬。摆在我们面前的只有三条路径可选：在家教育；或重返美国– 在那里我们既有资源，亦有亲人的守候；抑或留在北京，为他创办一所真正契合他所需、且尚不存在的学校。
从理性上讲，回美国的理由十分充分。秋实的需要真实而迫切。而我本人既无教育从业背景，亦从未涉足学校创办与运营；彼时中国尚无相应的法规监管体系容许我们所构想的办学模式。而若倾力投入筹建我脑海中构想的学校，我原本的跨国公司职业生涯将难以为继。但理智告诉我，取舍已不言而明。
然而，我又一次不愿离去。于是，带着可能错选的清醒认知，带着对“覆水难收”的了然于胸，惴惴不安的我为了秋实纵身入局。我深知有朝一日我或许会再度审视这一抉择，而我与秋实也永远无法回到最初的起点。
离开跨国公司岗位前，我做了一件事，这是此生我一直努力践行的人生准则的最初印证：衡量我们所缔造之物的唯一标准，便是当我们转身离去后，其是否依然生生不息，繁茂如初。在获得董事会正式批准后，我花了几个月时间培养一位中国同事接任，以确保已经建立起来的一切，能够在或许比我更加胜任的人手中延续。我必须坦言，告别跨国公司职业生涯，于我而言，亦是一种难以名状的失去。
此后，我便开启了致力于创办北京京西学校（Western Academy of Beijing, WAB）的历程。当我正为秋实的就学问题辗转思虑时，北京日益壮大的外籍人士社群亦深陷自身困局：可供外籍子女入读的学位严重匮乏。显而易见的出路便是以北京为数不多的外交使团学校为基础，拓展提升。 但这些学校各自采用本国的课程和教学方式，并优先录取本国外交人员和公民的适龄子女，而我们不愿如此这般。我们所憧憬的是一所真正国际化、以学习者为中心的学校；一所不隶属于任何单一国家的教育体系或教学大纲的学校，扎根中国，并向所有求学者敞开大门。日益激增的学位需求-- 尤其是那些来自五个英语国家使团之外的外交与非外交人员家庭 -- 为我们实现愿景创造了绝佳的契机。自1993年5月起，尽管彼时我们尚无校舍、无经费、无办学许可证，亦无任何现成的法规框架支持我们所构想的办校理念，但是我们仍凝聚起一个多元共同体：未来学生的家长、教育从业者、企业高管、外交使节，以及来自地方和中央的各级政府官员。我们同心协力，摸索出一种完全自主且独具匠心的方式，去回应那份迫切的共同诉求。最终，一所真正海纳百川、能让所有求学者蓬勃成长的学校应运而生。而我的儿子也终于在这里找到了属于他的天地。
我们所取得的一切成就，皆源于在未知中学习如何跨越那些始料未及的重重阻碍。这意味着，纵然前路茫茫，我们仍相信每一位参与者，并坚信我们一起定能带来破局之策。京西学校由一群从未设想自己会成为办学者的人所创建，亦因志同道合者怀揣同一个梦想而汇聚加入。三十余载岁月流转，京西学校延续至今，历久弥新，靠的不是克服了创校之初的重重困难，而恰恰是这些困难本身。
上：京西学校首个校址是租用一家濒临倒闭的国企办公楼，办公楼改造前后对比；校址地图显示，其位于东北四环路外侧此国企厂区内；平整一块空地并铺种草坪；京西学校最初的标识与校名牌。
下：1994年9月1日开学首日——剪彩仪式、与中国政府官员参观校园、庆典晚宴；主楼上的校名与标识；孩子们与家庭的合影。
就这样，我离开了跨国公司的职业生涯，选择了家庭、亦选择了中国。在随后的岁月里，这一直觉一再重现，虽非如出一辙，却有它自己的无可辩驳的韵脚。而每一次倾力而为都留下了自己的印迹；起初它们往往隐而未显，然而待到回响降临之时，所获之馈赠亦鲜少恰如我初衷之所盼，有时更远超我曾敢于设想的一切。
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京西学校于1994年成立后，我开始为中国非政府组织和公益慈善基金会提供咨询、辅导与能力建设服务。我发现自己热爱这份工作。不过几年后，当我受邀负责京西学校新校园的设计、征地和建设时，便暂时放下了手上的工作。我至今还保留着一顶竹编安全帽，作为那段岁月的纪念。实现了京西学校从租赁一家近乎倒闭的国企厂房到迁入专属校舍的愿景，这是凝聚着同心协力的整个社群共同努力的结果。正因如此，今日的京西学校才得以成为一所从幼儿园贯通至高三的创新国际学校。
京西学校专属校园，全新幼儿园至十二年级的教学设施：2000年8月开学剪彩；奠基仪式；封顶庆典；以及京西学校的全新标识。
京西学校的新校园于21世纪初落成，而我也再次站在了人生又一个转折点。彼时的京西学校不再如从前那般需要我，而我也需要探寻新的人生角色和目标。离开企业界已久，重返已非易事；况且，销售和服务体系的搭建、技术转让的谈判、合资企业的设立，都是我经历过的事了。我需要全新的挑战——可以延续京西学校所赋予我的精神内核，即富有创造力又讲求协作解决问题之道。而一如我人生中诸多际遇，接下来发生的事情正向一个我全然始料未及的方向悄然展开。
似乎毫无征兆地，我接到了一个来自克林顿基金会中国艾滋病项目幕后捐赠人的电话。他正在物色中国区创始负责人，而我早年在华盛顿特区工作时的一位旧时同僚向他推荐了我。几十年来，此同僚与我虽一直通过互通音讯与来华之际保持着联系，但我全然不知他与这位捐赠人私交甚笃，而他的推荐更是我始料未及的。
我与美国跨国公司哥德电子（Gould Electronics）的中国办事处团队；该公司后被AEG收购，其后又并入施耐德集团（Groupe Schneider）。
时间回到20世纪80年代初——当时找一份能让我重返中国的工作并不易。中美双边关系亦刚刚正式恢复，进入中国的职业路径十分有限。1981年初，我终于找到一个机会：在华盛顿特区的一家致力于促进中美贸易的商业协会工作。两年半后，协会的一家会员公司聘请我，负责在京筹建及中国业务运营。彼时的我无从知晓，当年在协会结下的同僚之谊，竟会在随后的岁月里于我毫无察觉之际，悄然将我工作的点滴转达给了克林顿基金会的捐赠人，一个我梦寐以求、却始料未及的扎根中国的公共卫生事业契机。到21世纪初，无论是早年为跨国公司筹建中国区业务发展的岁月，还是后来联合创办京西学校的历程，已然为我积淀了为竞聘克林顿基金会这一职位积累了扎实的资历与坚实的底气。于是，我欣然应允。
我接下这份工作时，中国正处于一场迟迟未得到正视的全国性的艾滋病疫情之中。彼时中国的公共卫生体系应对能力尚有待加强：规范诊断、病患关怀与疾病治疗尚付阙如。而在当时，这种具有传染性、危及生命的疾病，一旦确诊就被视同于“死刑”。围绕它的社会污名极其严重，患者不得不隐瞒病情，反之又进一步助长了疫情的蔓延。为此，受中国政府邀请，克林顿基金会进入中国协助构建、试点并形成一套综合治疗与关怀体系，以嵌入全国公共卫生基础设施，从中央层层贯通至村级卫生所，涵盖抗病毒药品采购、诊疗方案和即时诊断。若此模式成功落地，此中美合作便有望将”死刑判决“逆转为为长期可控的慢性疾病，让患者重获新生，从而助力遏制疫情蔓延。
我们的工作充满挑战。彼时的我本人既无公共卫生专业背景，亦未接受过医学训练，而我的团队则是一支成员背景迥异的队伍：他们皆是病毒治疗领域的西方医护专家，但对中国这片土地毫无经验可言。当时艾滋病感染率最高的群体恰恰是那些在中国处于社会边缘、法律保障欠缺的脆弱群体，因而他们不仅难以触达，也很敏感。相较于全国亟待开展的工作量而言，我们的资金也很紧张。基金会的政府合作伙伴常常对这种疾病心存顾虑，对我们的参与亦显踌躇不安。出差密集而艰辛，我们频繁奔赴远离北京的省份和乡村，包括中部的河南、湖北，南方的四川、云南、广西，以及地处中国西北边陲的新疆。所有决策缺乏先例可循，亦没有现成的操作手册可依，我甚至时常无法判断我们的所作所为是否真的产生了积极的效果。支撑我们坚持下去的是使命的清晰笃定，是那些被治疗、被给予希望的一个个真实的个体，也是病患周围人群眼中 / 病患身边人眼中悄然改变的认知与态度。但我自问：我们真的带来了改变吗？
克林顿基金会医疗保健获取项目的首个项目致力于与各国政府合作，共同应对全球艾滋病疫情。这两份中国报刊文章详细介绍了基金会在云南和河南开展的部分工作。
多年以后，在一次与原卫生部的非正式闭门会议中，我们获悉：尽管克林顿基金会在华投入的资金远少于其他任何一家外国机构，但我们的合作却为改善中国艾滋病患者的处境、遏制疫情做出了最为显著的贡献。而我未曾预料到的是这份工作反哺予我的馈赠——那些在多年同舟共济中结下的情谊，最终成为我生命中最深厚的友谊。这种回报往往无从规划、亦无法预见。
2008年，我再度收到一份看似与我自身资历并无显见契合的邀约：美国波音和康明斯发动机公司的中国区总裁联袂相邀，请我构建、发起并领导一家非营利的政企合作联合体，聚焦世界最大的两个碳排放国——中美两国 ，旨在协同推动清洁能源解决方案的商业化应用。该组织由美国企业出资设立，同时吸纳中国企业共同参与，并与两国政府建立正式合作伙伴关系。其间企业作为主导力量，政府则退居幕后予以支持，绝非反其道而行之。欲使此构想落地生根，我们必须凝聚各个利益攸关方最高决策层来促成、资助，并对我们所构想的框架与机制正式予以认可与背书。其成果即为“中美能源合作项目”（U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program，简称ECP）。ECP于2009年正式设立——正值新当选的美国总统首次对中国进行国事访问之际，两国元首于北京人民大会堂共同见证项目启动。ECP之所以能成功，与京西学校和克林顿基金会合作的底层逻辑如出一辙：那些秉持共同使命的利益攸关者，在真实的困境中做出艰难的抉择并最终走到一起，共同缔造了任何一方的单打独斗皆无法企及的宏图。尽管随着中美关系的渐行渐远，ECP最终难以为继，但在其存续的多年间所产生的影响是真实的，而许多由此建立的合作关系至今依然坚实牢固。
左：一篇刊登在中国美国商会期刊文章的首页，详细介绍了 ECP 成立第一年取得的成果。
上中：2009年11月，美国总统奥巴马对中国进行国事访问期间，与中国国家主席胡锦涛在北京人民大会堂共同宣布ECP的成立，并代表两国政府予以正式认可。
中：ECP标识。
右上：2009年ECP成立大会上的美方创始公司成员。
右下：ECP运营满两年时的主要美方公司成员。
ECP的工作告一段落之后，我以个人身份重返20世纪90年代便已开启的慈善事业工作，并为其倾注了全部心力：联合创立了一个非营利的陪伴学习平台，以扶持中国新兴的公益慈善基金会，为本土非政府组织提供能力建设。同时我继续在教育和公民社会领域履行理事及顾问的职责。相较于此前，后来的工作虽少了几分喧嚣与瞩目，但对于那些身处其中的人而言，其深远意义未有丝毫减损。而其底层逻辑和行事准则始终如一，从未改变。
中：为在北京举行的庆祝活动准备致辞。该活动庆祝姚莉（左）所著《做幸福的普通人》英文版“Happiness in Being Ordinary“ 于伦敦书展发布（我是该书的首席译者）。姚莉是一位企业、慈善、教育家，亦是一家慈善职业学校联合体的创办人。
左、右：参与机构与教育能力建设及相关支持工作。
回望这三十余载机构建设与慈善事业领域工作历程，最令我动容的，并非最终建立了什么，而在于如何建立的。每一次，工作序幕皆以同样的方式开启：寻得那些真正关切此问题的人，或那些可被唤起共鸣的人，将大家聚集一堂，而后满怀笃信 —— 最终破茧而出的成果定然超越任何一方的孤军作战。这一点，既体现在一群找不到学校送孩子入读的北京家长身上；也彰显于倾力遏制疫情的医生、政府官员和患者之中；即见于弥合双边能源企业高管分歧的能力；亦融于中国基金会领导人与从业者正在推动的系统化、可持续和高效的慈善事业，造福国家。纵然社群不同，问题不同，所激起的涟漪效应也各不相同，且常常远超出在场者预见的广度与深度，但我们所秉持的方法却始终如一。而就在这一切交织涌动的中央，不知不觉，那些社群已然与我彼此相融——它们成了我的一部分，正如我亦成了它们的一部分。
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继而进入了2024年。我将言简意赅，因为事情本身比任何诠释都更具分量。
2024年，我的儿子Joseph（叶秋实）在苏州猝然离世，年仅三十八岁，身后留下了他的妻子与年仅六岁的幼女。而我先生亦在同一时期被确诊罹患两种癌症，且已经转移。
祸不单行，我们远嫁美国的女儿Sarah（叶冬圃）难产，命悬一线。当冬圃和初生的稚子都尚在医院时，我却不得不告知她：她的哥哥永远离开了我们。
若让我描摹身处那段至暗时刻的心境，唯有如此这般：当你背负着为自己、为他人、为所有期盼你屹立不倒的人而承受这千钧重担时，你再无暇顾及自己是否能承受，唯有咬紧牙关坚持撑下去。我也曾深陷如此境地，只是彼时的状态与心境皆与今日有所不同：彼时秋实尚且年幼，京西学校亦尚未建立，我亦退无可退。而这一次，煎熬远胜往昔，痛楚锥心蚀骨，结局亦无可转圜。然而在我内心深处，依然能辨认出这片至暗之地的轮廓。
随后发生的一切非我所求，历经数月而非朝夕之间。一位昔日克林顿基金会的同事慨然相助，随我远赴苏州。在那里，我的儿媳和亲家正苦苦守候，他们本正与秋实一起度假，彼时亦手足无措不知该如何面对接下来的一切。时值春节假期，整座城市大多停摆。一连几日，她料理一应事宜，妥善料理遗体接运与火化相关所有事宜 —— 各种文书、审批手续，条条框框、事无巨细。而彼时的我却也力不从心。我的朋友与昔日同事，甚至包括三十年前企业界共事过的旧友，纷纷送来食物、无数次往返机场接送、默默地关心问候，直至今日，依然如此。秋实的追思会选在了京西学校举办——这所因他当年所需但尚无此般而创立的学校。追思会当天逾两百亲友亲临现场，另有两百余人在线观礼。秋实四年级时的老师担任司仪，学校信息技术和传播部全程提供技术支持。此后，京西学校小学图书馆以秋实之名重新命名。图书馆入口处设有纪念铭牌，而我每每踏足学校都会经过此处。而追思会晚宴由我一位相识二十余载的挚友兼同事一手操办——她是一位中国公益职业学校联合体的创办人，而我自创立之初便担任理事会理事。彼时理事会同仁也为我先生就医多方奔走。我在克林顿基金会任职期间，以及此后从事老年照护工作期间结识的公共卫生界同仁亦集结起来，确保我的先生能在中国获得最高水准的治疗。时至今日，他已彻底摆脱了癌症的阴霾。
左：背着秋实的骨灰，走出苏州殡仪馆，带他回北京的家。
右：追思会尾声献演的纪念叶秋实乐曲。乐曲由刘凯（好友，专业音乐家兼学者）创作并演奏。
左：京西学校小学部图书馆更名纪念铭牌，以纪念叶秋实。
右：图书馆内部。
远在另一半球，冬圃和她新生幼子，虽身处我们的臂膀所不及之处，但她儿时在京西学校的昔日同窗和我的表亲，在随后的数月间默默重新调整了各自的生活，只为确保无论距离多么遥远，无论病痛与悲伤如何铮然作响，她们母子身边始终有家人相伴。
我们的根，坚如磐石。此般并非我刻意为之，而皆源于其本就深厚且真实。
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诚然，我无法断言，历经磨难定能迎来成长，原地坚守总是胜于转身离去，或我所做出的选择于旁人而言同样正确。生命的感悟，终无法严丝合缝地套用。而我所能给予的唯有这肺腑之言。
生命中总有这样一些时刻，如突如其来的变故降临。那些横生波折不请自来、不期而至，更将你原本的人生轨迹弯折拉扯至濒临断裂的边缘。然而，恰恰是这些时刻，决定了某种真实之物是否得以构筑，而这一切取决于你投入其中的态度与用心。你以何种姿态去直面这一切：是否选择直面痛苦、知难而上？是否在不确定中坚守？并最终作出一个真正属于自己的抉择；抑或任由其替你做出决断。
在我看来，这就是一个分水岭：一个区别“历经岁月沉淀铸就的厚重人生”与“得过且过的一生”。
一路走来，我的选择皆非完美，亦无把握能够次次皆对。而事实上，我也屡屡失之偏颇。然而每一次抉择，无不植根于这片纷繁、严苛、而又无可替代的土地——中国。她并非我生而所属，却是我自己的选择。正是这片土地孕育了我的社群、友谊、人际网络，让梦想成真，成为我一次次找回自我的基石。
这，便是四十余载中国岁月为我所铸就的一切。无关乎那些机构的宏大叙事，亦无关乎那份履历上的浮名。而正是那些真正由我做出的抉择，以及那些与我志同道合的同行者，让一切皆有可能，一切皆可承受，一切亦返璞归真。
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