Name: Betty Barr
From: Born in Shanghai, father from Glasgow, mother from Dallas, Texas
Living in: Shanghai

"In spite of rapid new economic developments, China's deep-rooted ancient culture influences my life every day."

Born in Shanghai in 1933 to a missionary teacher father and YWCA mother, Betty has spent a total of 44 years in China.  She grew up in Shanghai during World War II and the Civil War years before going to Wellesley College in the US in 1950.  After teacher training in Glasgow, Betty taught in Hong Kong for 13 years but in 1973 she was back in Shanghai teaching until 1975.  After living in the UK for almost a decade, she returned to Shanghai for a permanent move in 1984 to marry her Shanghainese husband, George Wang.

(Betty Barr, while growing up in Shanghai in the early 1930s)

From 1984, she taught in the Shanghai Foreign Languages Institute, now known as the Shanghai International Studies University, on three British Council projects doing teacher training and research.  Since her students came from remote areas of China, she later had the chance to visit many of them with her husband, having some interesting adventures along the way.  She continued teaching for almost 20 years, along with being an IELTS examiner, before retiring in 2002.

In recent years, Betty has co-authored two books of memoirs with her husband.  Last year, they edited and published I Love China, a collection of articles by her husband’s first British wife, Margaret Wang, who wrote them while teaching in China from 1947 to 1983, when she passed away.

In 1989, Betty was presented with a Magnolia Award, the highest award presented to expatriates by the Shanghai Government.  She was one of the first 18 foreign residents in Shanghai to receive a “green card” from the Ministry of Public Security.  In 1996, she was awarded an MBE for services to the teaching of English in China.  And in 2008 she received a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

At age 76, she feels privileged to have lived in China in three distinct historical eras.