Ancestry

Weihai, where Shandong University is located, occupies a peninsula in Northern China,  across the Yellow Sea from Korea. 

As you can see from the map, we are close to Russia, and there are many Russian vacationers at this seaside city this time of year. Many shops here cater to this clientele.

Often, people speak to me in Russian, a language I’ve  never studied.  At first I wondered why, and then I realized it’s my appearance. For while I’m  a native speaker of English and hold an  American passport, I’m genetically East European  and look  slightly different from Northern and West Europeans.  My grandparent came to America in the decade between 1900 and 1910. They were from Austria, Latvia,  Romania, and Poland.