Karen Patterson

Karen Patterson lived, worked and studied in mainland China for 15 years: She arrived in China in 1994 with a backpack for one year and wound up staying and teaching English, working as an immigration officer, and founding and managing 4 small businesses as an entrepreneur. Befriending the art community with her camera, she met and married a Chinese artist where Karen and her husband attended art exhibitions almost weekly for close to ten years. Having her daughter in China really opened her eyes to the extent of cross-cultural differences in the way that local Chinese view ‘half-Chinese’ kids, not to mention parenting styles and norms. Karen holds a BA Honors degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada and is a Masters candidate in International and Intercultural Communications. She and her daughter now live in Calgary, Canada, where she works as a Destination Service Consultant for Dwellworks and is writing a non-fiction book about her time in China.