Jim Batterson

Jim and Xucheng near Xucheng’s home

Jim and his wife, Jinny, are off on the most interesting retirement we’ve heard of so far. At the end of 2005 they left a small computer consulting business they ran in Richmond, sold the house and went off for a year of teaching English in China at Tarim University (originally named Tarim University of Agricultural Reclamation), situated at an oasis in the Taklimakan desert in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in the northwest-most part of the People’s Republic.

They are back in the U.S. this year, living in North Carolina for the duration, to get acquainted with their first grandson, Parker. This fall they expect to return to China to teach again.

Jim writes, “My friend, Xucheng, took me to visit the village where he had been sent for ‘reeducation’' during the cultural revolution, near LiPu, south of Guilin, in southern China. I took some pictures of peasants plowing rice fields and he said he had done that in his youth.  ‘Can you teach me how?’ I asked.”

Both Jim and Jinny have M.B.A.s from the University of Richmond. She also has a B.A. in French from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and a master’s from Johns Hopkins. They have two children: Jason, 32, a UVa grad who is now a teacher; and Scott, 30, a Virginia Tech graduate who’s a raft guide.