Mortensen, Esther Tappert.

Arriving in China as a single woman, thirty years of age, Esther Tappert taught English at Ginling College, a Christian women's college in Nanking, for three years before returning to the United States. Esther described her role at Ginling as "trying to make good women who can read and write English and save China."

Returning to Ginling in 1933 after receiving an M.A. in Education from Yale, Esther continued teaching English there until the summer of 1937. When the Japanese invasion of Nanking prevented her return from a vacation excursion to western China, she spent the next two academic years teaching English at Chungking University, a Chinese provincial government university. This proved to be a positive and liberating experience for Esther. The only Westerner on the faculty at Chungking University, she felt useful and respected. Reflecting during this period on her years at Ginling, Esther wrote to her family: "no wonder I am death on women's institutions with their petty spites and trivial concerns..."

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