What’s a nice Jewish girl from Central Park West doing in a southern
Chinese town teaching English to rowdy middle school students? The answer can
be found in No Hugging in China, an
entertaining memoir by St. Petersburg writer Felicia Brings. This sometimes
funny, sometimes surprising book gives readers an insider’s view of life in the
People’s Republic of China – and it’s certainly not what you’d expect.
For Brings, the road to China began in Manhattan. She grew
up in New York City, started writing in junior high school, was the editor of
her high school’s newspaper and earned a degree in English from New York’s Pace
University. She co-authored a scholarly book when she was at Hunter College and
wrote several articles that were published in newspapers across the country but
never intended to become a full-time writer. “It’s not something I really enjoy,”
she admits. “I’m very social, and sitting alone in front of that blank page is
very challenging. As a writer, your ego is out there to be splayed open. I
always say I’ll probably never do it again – but I probably will.”
So Brings became a teacher. She taught writing at Monterey
Peninsula College in California and at Laboratory Institute of Merchandising in
New York City. She also spent ten years
leading corporate seminars for Fortune 100 companies. But everything changed
one day when she and a friend, Susan Winter, were having lunch. “We both had
younger boyfriends, and we were talking and giggling about some of our
experiences,” she recalls. “At some point, one of us said we should write
a book. So we did.” At first, they intended to write about their own exploits.
Soon, however, they realized there were lots of women with similar stories, so
they decided to start interviewing them. The result was a groundbreaking book –
Older Women, Younger Men: New Options for
Love and Romance – published in September, 2000.
An exploration of relationships that were often considered taboo,
Older Women, Younger Men became
wildly popular and is a source of pride for Brings. “Back then, the term ‘cougar’ hadn’t entered
the lexicon and most of these relationships were furtive,” she explains. “This
was something men had done for ages, but women couldn’t. I’m pleased and proud
that I contributed to ending that nonsense.”
Seven years later, Brings was approaching her sixtieth
birthday and ready for an adventure. Dreading another icy New York winter, she
decided to answer an ad recruiting English instructors to teach in China’s
Guangdong province, an area with a sub-tropical climate. The ad promised a six-month contract teaching
adults at the Bridge Language Institute in “China’s Garden City.” What Brings discovered
when she arrived was something completely different. She was assigned to a
middle school in the industrial town of Xiaolan where she faced rebellious
students, rampant pollution, a scarcity of toilet paper, crazed drivers and
government corruption that would make the IRS blush. A tumultuous six months
later, Brings returned to the United States with an abiding admiration for the
Chinese people and enough experiences to fill a book. She combed through the
emails she’d sent during her stay, and in February, 2012 published No Hugging in China, a memoir
chronicling her adventures (and misadventures) in Xiaolan. “China is an amazing
place,” she says. “It’s colorful, fascinating and wonderful, but there’s a lot
or corruption. I hope the book will show how that impacts the lives of everyday
people.”
In 2012, Brings published China Tips (or a Blonde’s Guide to Teaching in China, a 25-page
compendium of practical advice for any Westerners entertaining the idea of
traveling or working in China. She hopes the book will assist Western tourists
in navigating the customs, manners and mores of the Chinese people. According
to Brings, “China Tips tackles the
pressing issues most travel books don't address, like where to find coffee, how
to use a lazy susan in a restaurant, what toilet paper is for, etc.”
Brings’s three favorite things about Florida are “Weather,
weather and weather.” She enjoys shopping and jogging with Oliver, the
long-haired Chihuahua she calls “the light of my life.” She is currently working on a screen treatment
of No Hugging in China that she hopes
will be optioned for Chinese television. “I’ve never written a screenplay
before,” she admits, “so I’m flying by the seat of my pants, which I always do.
It’s worked out so far. I hope it will again.”
For more information, visit the author’s Amazon author page
at http://www.amazon.com/Felicia-Brings/e/B001KIXV34
