I'm 32 and have lived abroad for nearly a decade. Now, I'm weighing life in China against returning to the US.

"I realized in high school that my academic strength was learning foreign languages. My dad did business in China, and his best friend was Chinese, so I've always had a connection to the country. When I was 15, I went to China to stay with a host family for six months as part of a US government-sponsored full-immersion program. It was in 2009, the golden era of US-China relations."

"China felt like the Wild West. At the time, nothing was black and white. Everything felt negotiable - anything was possible if you were ambitious enough. In the market, I was haggling for goods and negotiating. It was pure adrenaline. I'd see the address of a manufacturer on the back of a packet of tea in the convenience store, then head to that address and start talking to the factory owner."

"When I was in a factory waiting for tea bags to be produced, a guy invited me to meet his professor, who specialized in tea at the South China Agricultural University. The professor told me to come back to Guangzhou after I graduated, and he'd teach me everything he knew about tea. He told me I'd be his first Amer"

Dylan Rothenberg discovered his aptitude for foreign languages in high school and maintained a personal connection to China through family ties. At 15 he lived with a host family in China for six months in a US government immersion program during 2009. He majored in Chinese and economics and spent a junior year at Peking University, where he began work as a translator and assisted in buying tea for export. He moved to Guangzhou, immersed himself in the massive tea market, learned by negotiating with manufacturers, and received mentorship from a tea professor. He founded Wu Mountain Tea, lived eight years in Guangzhou, and built a 50,000-subscriber YouTube channel.

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