Her father was the first Chinese graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was classmates with Massachusetts senator Leverett Saltonstall.

Saltonstall helped pass a law to allow her entire family to emigrate from Hong Kong to the US.

[1] She grew up in San Francisco, where she attended Lowell High School, and earned a Bachelor's degree in Communications and Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, and a master's degree in Government and East Asia Regional Studies from Harvard University in 1967.

[2] From 1971 she was a staffer for the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, and thereafter worked in a number of other roles, including administering a food-aid program.

In 1998, she turned her energies back toward China, first serving for a year as a visiting professor at the Institute for International Relations of the American Studies Center at Peking University.