In 1981 newlyweds Patti Isaacs and her Italian husband Federico Gauss Rescigno traveled to China, a place she’d grown up fearing, to work for a year in the ancient capital of Xi’an. Returning 24 years later, Patti reunited with old friends, worked with China’s younger generation, and found a city transformed. Her stories are snapshots of a span of years when a city under communism—slow, agrarian, and egalitarian—became a fast-paced metropolis of 8 million.

Illustrated with maps and “before and after” photos, The Second Long March chronicles changes that had occurred in her life, the lives of her former students, and the country itself in its rise as a global economic power. She presents events for those seeking to understand them through the eyes of ordinary people.