One month after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, I arrived in China as an advisor for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. I was a watermelon breeder for Clemson University, and I was assigned to evaluate the Melon Research Institute at Gansu Agricultural University in Lanzhou, Gansu. If I considered their melon breeding program effective, FAO would provide a large grant to the University to expand their program.
This single trip introduced me to the "Yellow River Honey Dew," to the professor who developed it, and to two outstanding young Chinese who are still part of my life after a quarter century. It gave me a way to return to China to continue cooperative watermelon breeding research. Finally, it gave me an insight into the soul of China itself.
