Let’s Move to China, Ma Cherie!

            Would you do it?

            Adela Chavez answered “yes” to that question and spent the next five years in Asia.  She shocked her entire family by giving birth to her first child and then following her husband to his new job in the city of Shanghai.  Let’s Move to China, Ma Cherie! tells the true story of her amazing experience.

            The year is 2003, and China has only recently opened its doors to foreign visitors and begun its rush to modernize.  In her own words, Adela tells a lively story of her arrival and adjustment to life in   chaotic, yet fascinating Shanghai.  She describes how she sets up housekeeping with wonderful Chinese maid, joins a congenial group of expatriate women, and explores the vast urban metropolis she now calls home.  It is exciting, she finds, but also quite challenging to build a good life for herself and her family during these early years of China’s modernization.  Nothing, however, can prepare her for the changes that living five years in Asia brings to her family – especially to the love of her life, her oh-so-charming French husband.

            Let’s Move to China, Ma Cherie! was written jointly by Adela and a journalist, her aunt, Susan McDonald.  Susan loved Adela’s stories and guided her niece in recalling her Asian adventure from its first beginnings to its dramatic conclusion.  The result of their collaboration is a fascinating memoir that covers ten years of Adela’s globe-trotting life in Florida, Mexico, China and Malaysia.  It is an adventure story and a tender love story, but it also serves as a cautionary tale about what can happen if a woman gives up too much of herself to another.

            Most of all, this story is true.  All the events Adela describes actually happened to one young woman who dared to say yes to adventure.