Stephanie’s Story … Born in China—Made in America

It was with a great amount of love and concern that I asked Stephanie to tell her story.

Her background is such that she needs no self‑promotion—nor has she ever sought any. In reading Stephanie’s story, told in her own words for the first time, her love and gratitude for America are as obvious as our task is clear: we love our country, and we will help DeMarxify California And The World.

Scott Shields Candidate For Governor Of California

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Some are born into turbulent times; others come of age searching for truth within them.

Stephanie was born in 1964 in Mao-era China—a time when faith was replaced, tradition was denounced, and thought was carefully regulated. Like millions of children of her generation, her early years unfolded amid synchronized songs and political slogans. Textbooks and radio broadcasts defined who the enemies were and where truth resided. The world was rendered in stark contrasts: loyalty and betrayal, light and darkness.

As a child, she longed to visit Tiananmen Square in Beijing—a place portrayed as a symbol of glory and hope. She could not have imagined that, years later, it would come to represent a turning point in her spiritual awakening.

During her adolescence, she began practicing qigong, a traditional Chinese discipline integrating mind and body cultivation. For the first time, she experienced a source of strength that arose from within rather than from external instruction. In the quiet rigor of early morning practice, she discovered focus, serenity, and introspection. She began to sense that meaning could be sought beyond prescribed doctrine.

In the 1980s, Chinese society stood between constraint and cautious opening. Stephanie studied diligently under her teachers and gradually became involved in higher-level exchanges and instruction. Her life trajectory quietly began to intersect with a wider world.

In 1987, she was invited to New York to teach qigong at the United Nations headquarters. It was her first time setting foot in the United States. The country she had been taught to regard as chaotic, hostile, and morally bankrupt appeared entirely different in reality. The order of the subway, the architecture of the city, and—most strikingly—the kindness of strangers challenged everything she had learned.

She began to question: If what she had been told was incomplete or untrue, then what was real?

In June 1989, gunfire in Beijing reverberated around the world. Watching American television coverage from afar, she saw tanks confronting students in Tiananmen Square. When she called her family in China, her father’s hushed tone and fearful silence revealed more than words could express. She realized then that in some places, certain truths could not be spoken aloud.

In that moment, her world divided in two: the homeland she knew yet felt constrained by, and the unfamiliar land that embodied freedom.

She chose to stay.

In the years that followed, she deepened her spiritual practice and continued seeking the roots of cultural inheritance. Gradually, she came to understand that China’s millennia-old spiritual traditions had not vanished; they had been obscured. Her life’s sense of purpose began to take shape—to help others rediscover their own spiritual heritage.

Years later, fate brought her together with Scott. From different cultural backgrounds, they were united by a shared reverence for freedom, conviction, and moral responsibility. Their partnership became not only a bond of affection but also a meeting of ideals.

Stephanie’s story is not about politics, its merely about contrasting systems of governance. It is, at its heart, a story of awakening—of how an individual preserves the capacity to think amid powerful currents of ideology; of how one searches for truth within tension and contradiction; of how hope can be chosen even after doubt and disillusionment.

She was born in China, yet came of age spiritually in America.

Her story, soon to be published book, records more than the events of her life. It tells a story of choice—between fear and freedom, between propaganda and truth, between external authority and inner conscience.

As you meet Stephanie, may you reflect on your own journey.
For the truest boundaries are not only drawn across nations, but within the human spirit.