The Johanneans by GLIU photography
Ginger Liu’s globe trotting aunt invites her to an alumni reunion at her late father’s University in Shanghai. The two embark on a journey across China and a quest for self-discovery that ultimately brings her closer to her family and teaches her how to let go." I was invited by my 85 year old aunt -a Professor of Ethnomusicology whose lifetime definitive work on Kunqu Chinese opera is kept in the Library of Congress -to a unique alumni world reunion of graduates (Johanneans) at St. Johns’ University in Shanghai; where for the first time since the communist take over in 1949, graduates from all over the world would meet on the grounds of the “Harvard of the East” for perhaps the last time. Both my late father and my aunt were graduates of the university. They were also the children of a Chinese father and an English mother whose work and studies in the early part of the 20th century took them across England, USA and China. Ginger Liu
