Foreign Exchange is the story of Yeh Yuanshuang and Dorothea Kingsley
Wakeman and their experiences at the American missionary school. Founded
in 1875, the school that would become St. Hilda's School for Girls was
intended to provide a strong, Christian education for its students.
Daily student-teacher interactions, however, created an environment that
allowed for a foreign exchange which led to the creation of a new
culture that subverted both American and Chinese gender constructs. The
walls that surrounded the St. Hilda's compound not only served to
protect the school from outside danger, but to also create a space where
new gender expectations could be nurtured away from the gaze of prying
eyes. Thus, the American teachers as well as the Chinese students were
acculturated and socialized in ways that liberated them from their
respective patriarchal situations. For Dorothea, serving as a teacher
allowed her to remain single yet still be engaged in a professional
career that would not be as socially stigmatizing as it would be if she
remained at home. As a teacher at St. Hilda's, not only was she
educating a future generation of Chinese women, but as an independent
woman who served in an important position, she was an example for the
girls at St. Hilda's what women could do when given an education. For
Yuanshuang, her education provide her with the means to aspire to roles
outside the culturally prescribed positions as daughter, wife, and
mother by giving her the intellectual tools that enabled her to find
work as a teacher at the start of the War of Resistance against the
Japanese. Her involvement in school activities developed self-reliance,
independence, and leadership skills that served her both in China and
eventually in the United States. Her education socialized her to
American values and customs so that when she arrived in the United
States, she was able to adapt readily. Yuanshuang and Dorothea's stories
also reveal the impact of the modern world on their parents' generation.
