Turning East

The wedding procession

Welcome to Turning East.

This website features oral histories–that is, recorded interviews which were edited to be read but also to retain the language of the individual storyteller, whose name was often changed to preserve her or his privacy. I started collecting these stories after I arrived in China in 1984. All are set in  China, Korea, Japan or the Philippines and center on different aspects of living, working and traveling in Asia, including religion, commerce, education, home life, economics, politics, health care and life on the road. Occasionally I include a story of my own. There are now 85, indexed on the next page. I’m posting every two weeks, so please visit regularly for new stories or write me to register, which means new posts will automatically be sent to your email account. The posts are archived and indexed  for easy access. Please click on any of the pictures for a better view.

I’ve just added security to this website, so people have to go through the CAPCHA to register, however spammers are still registering for the site, presumably in order to infest it with advertising. At one point, some hacker sent 815 “comments” on these stories, all advertisements, then “posts” to sell products. So I’ve shut off both registration and comments again. Please send me any comments you have, and I’ll post them at the end of the story. I would also be happy to register you as a subscriber.

You can contact  me at duss...@yahoo.com.

Please do not use any of the content without permission.

New Link:

Please check out the CONVERSATIONS ACROSS BORDERS Project. The first prompt is “water.” I’m paired with poet Novisi Dzitrie, and we write about flooding in the Philippines and Ghana.

http://www.conversationsacrossborders.org/cabproject/writing/cabprojectwriting.html