William Brown always accurately calculates the length of his stay in China: 29 years in Xiamen, Fujian Province and two years in Taiwan, but Chinese are often surprised when he asks how many years of history China has—and he says their answer of 5,000 years is wrong. 

“When I first arrived in Xiamen, China, a history professor told me China had 5,000 years of history,” said William Brown, a professor of MBA Center of Xiamen University, with a wink, “but that was in 1988, so now it is 5,029 years.” 

William Brown, who prefers being called Bill, witnessed firsthand China’s dramatic changes over the past three decades. When he first arrived in Xiamen, a port city on the southeast coast of China, in the late 1980s, he was impressed at the open-mindedness of local people, in spite of the relative backwardness of their regional economy.  

But Bill had learned very little about China before he landed in Xiamen in 1988. From 1976 to 1978, he was a young airman in the U.S. Air Force in Taiwan, never dreaming that 10 years later, he and his wife, Susan Marie, who was born and raised in Taiwan, and their two sons would settle on the opposite side of the Straits, and in 1992 became the first foreigner with permanent residency in Fujian Province.

Asked why he moved to the Chinese mainland, Brown responded, "Because Chinese food is too expensive in America.”

However, his dream of moving to the mainland took much longer, and his decision was not accepted by his father until 16 years later, just three months before his father’s death.

“The last time I saw my father, he said to me I’d been right to come to China,” he said. Bill’s father’s generation, many of whom fought in the Vietnam War, viewed China and many other Asian countries as “enemies.” 

Brown has long seen great potential in the dynamics of China’s cultures and society, which he says is deeply rooted in history. Over a century ago, in 1907, an Amoy missionary, John MacGowan, wrote about the indomitable character of the Chinese:  

“In one’s dealing with the Chinese, one is continually being reminded of the strain of the dogged inflexibility that runs throughout the character of nearly every individual that one comes in contact with. It is not simple occasional instances that one runs up against.  It is in the race, and there is no doubt but that it is this force that has given it such a strength that it has been able to stand the wear and tear of ages and to be as strong physically as it was a thousand years ago.”

As the second generation of the Brown family in China, Bill’s sons have grown up in two cultures, and to ensure that they love and respect both countries, Bill dove into the sea of Chinese cultures and history to better understand his adopted homeland.