 click to enlarge I found this ad for Japanese tourism in a 1981 magazine targeted to American airline employees.
The guy in the photo really seems to be trying: dressing in yukata, staying at a Japanese inn, and reading Shogun (on my first couple of trips to Asia, I read James Clavell novels on the flight, so I’m not knocking that!).
But the strange thing about this photo is the title. Japan: Where East is West.
Huh?
I read the article, which proclaimed Japan had many places Westerners would find ‘international’ or ‘modern’ or ‘comfortable.’ As if the non-Western aspects of the country wouldn’t appeal.
The article included other photos, including one of a few geisha-inspired topless women (which certainly isn’t limited to Western tastes, although it does play into Western stereotypes of Asia).
I’m no expert, but I always figured Japan was pretty easy to adapt to 30 years ago, unlike other, more rustic countries in Asia. But maybe I’m wrong.
After all, the Sofia Coppola-directed film Lost in Translation depicts Scarlet Johansson’s horrible culture shock when she flies to Tokyo with her boyfriend for a short trip. (I’d feel out of my element staying in a 5 star hotel, too, but I wouldn’t fall into a depression over it!)
 click to enlarge I love this ad from 1959, advertising Hong Kong as a shopper’s paradise.
Apart from the obligatory faux Chinese brushstroke font, I’m struck by this brochure because it reminds me of Hong Kong’s amazing history all while life on the mainland fell apart at this time.
Just ten years after the birth of the PRC, China was in the throes of the Great Leap Forward in 1959. To develop heavy industry, people in China were told to melt their metal pots and pans and cooking utensils. But as it turned out, the metal from the cookware was useless to steel production, so it was all a big waste. Millions starved because they no longer had the ability to cook. Tragic.
But life in Hong Kong wasn’t easy at that time either. With hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into the colony each year back then, the HK government needed to relocate refugees living in dangerous shanties on the hillside. Sometimes water was only available for three to four hours a day, no matter where you lived in Hong Kong.
Despite these conditions, Hong Kong prospered as a light industry producer in the 50s, exporting plastic flowers, umbrellas, buttons, and enamelware. The success of Hong Kong’s light industry set the stage for the 1960s when the Made in Hong Kong label became associated instead with high quality goods: beaded cashmere sweaters, silk dresses, suits made in 24 hours, jade jewelry, rattan purses, and electronics.
And of course tourism in Hong Kong, aided by these amazing shopping opportunities, brought money into the territory.
I remember standing under a pagoda like the one framed in this brochure, looking down at the skyscrapers, Victoria Harbour, and across to Kowloon and the New Territories beyond that, all while marveling at the miracle that is Hong Kong.
It still brings tears to my eyes.
 Rainbow's End by Lauren St John Ah, another memoir of growing up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. I just can’t get enough.
This week I read my 5th in this genre, Lauren St John’s Rainbow’s End (Scribner, 2007).
St John grows up on a farm in rural Rhodesia, before the war in the late 1970s that would end white rule and eventually change the country’s name to Zimbabwe.
Surrounded by animals and the open plains, St John roams the land on her horse, Charm. Foster parent to pet snakes, pigs, sheep, and goats, she dreams of becoming a vet when she grows up. She even carries around a doctor kit to help care for the animals.
St John is a beautiful writer and even though I’ve read four other memoirs about Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, I enjoyed her tales of growing up. I picked up the book, though, because I wanted to read more about the war. (It’d been a while since I’d read Alexandra Fuller’s and Wendy Kann’s Zimbabwean memoirs, which chronicled the war).
And I guess that’s where I wanted a little more from this book.
She opens with a gruesome murder at the farm where her family settles during the war, but then life goes on seemingly worry-free. The characters are never really in harm’s way and while her father is away from home six months of the year to fight in the Rhodesian army, the reader doesn’t learn much about what he does while he’s away.
Likewise, St John mentions her mother often went away to have operations and lost many babies, but by the end of the book, I still don’t know what kind of operations she had and how many babies she lost, except for one baby briefly mentioned in the middle of the story. Had she become pregnant by other men and gone off for abortions? Was she mentally ill and going for treatment? Or did she have another medical problem? St John certainly foreshadowed the operations, lost babies, and her father’s horrible secret, but then at the end left me hanging.
I also wish she would have written more about her views about white rule and how these views changed. She also delves briefly into some important personal details at the end without any forewarning. I wonder why her editors didn’t push for more.
Regardless of these flaws, I couldn’t put the book down.
 click to enlarge I love this 1980 Samsonite ad. The suitcase is not only dated, but so are many of the shopping treasures inside.
It’s so easy to forget that Made in Hong Kong used to be as prevalent as today’s Made in China, especially for electronics. I’m sure my 12 year-old son wouldn’t even know what that radio/cassette player is all about.
My grandparents last visited Hong Kong a couple years after this ad was made.
They didn’t bring me ceramic foo dogs, teapots, or decorative eggs, but I lucked out in other ways. I still have a couple wooden jewelry boxes inlaid with faux-ivory. They also brought me light blue satin dragon slippers and maroon Chinese padded jackets. I think I even got some fans like the one in this ad.
Of course, when I moved to Hong Kong and saw these things everywhere, they didn’t seem as extraordinary as they had when I was growing up in the middle of America. But they always made good gifts for people back home, especially those far from a Chinatown.
 click to enlarge Yesterday I posted some stamps I’d sent from Cambodia in 1991. When I linked the posting to Facebook, a friend asked to see photos. Here’s one of me standing at Angkor Wat.
It was like a ghost town.
Besides my small tour, made up of British, Mexicans, Germans, some Thais, and a few Dutch (I was the sole American), I only saw a smattering of Cambodians.
It’s hard to see it in this photo, but the spires of the temple behind me were encased in bamboo scaffolding. An India group was restoring the temple in 1991.
I was actually extremely lucky to be in the area that year, one of the only summers of peace in Cambodia back then.
The Vietnamese had pulled out of Cambodia two years earlier, after occupying the country for a decade. Pol Pot, Cambodia’s Hitler, had returned from exile in Thailand. The different parties and rebel forces had come to an agreement (short-lived) in 1991. If I’d tried to visit a year or two earlier or later, it might have been dangerous to fly into Siem Reap.
But my desire to visit the country didn’t come on a whim.
At home in suburban Chicago during my youth, I loved the beautiful framed rubbings of Angkor Wat hung on my parents’ living room walls. My mom bought them in Cambodia when she visited in 1965. I wanted to visit those temples, too.
And sure enough, I found similar rubbings in Phnom Penh (at US$2 a piece, no less), before I flew to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat.
Now they’re hanging in my living room.
 click to enlarge On June 1, 1991, I wrote a postcard from Phnom Penh to my grandma, aunt, and uncle.
I wanted to send them a Cambodian postcard, but couldn’t find any in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. Luckily I had an extra from a pack I’d bought in Vietnam (the postcard showed a temple in Nha Trang, a city in Vietnam I didn’t visit).
In the postcard I wrote:
I am in Cambodia and having a wonderful time. The architecture is so beautiful! I went to the Royal Palace yesterday, as well as museums, an old temple, and the Central Market. Today I took a short flight to Angkor Wat, a famous temple built centuries ago. The tour was about 3 hours because the plane left this afternoon to go back to the capital, where I am staying. I was in Vietnam for 5 days before I came here. In two days I will fly back to Vietnam and travel there for another week. I meet my dad in 2 weeks in Thailand (I can’t wait!).
My writing wasn’t too articulate as a 20 year old. What I meant in the postcard was that flights to Siem Reap (to see Angkor Wat) only took off once a week back then. So you could either go for the day or for a week. The place was a dump, as was the whole country, and completely ill-equipped for foreign travelers. The only hotel in Siem Reap, the Grand Hotel d’Angkor, had been left to suffer several years after my mom visited in 1965. Like when the Americans started bombing Cambodia.
According to the Raffles’ website, the hotel didn’t operate from 1970 until December 1991 (Lon Nol’s army occupied it, then Pol Pot used it for the Khmer Rouge, then the Vietnamese occupied it).
But I could have sworn that several people on my day tour stayed there for a week. Maybe it functioned more like an informal guest house before that December. I remember eating lunch there the day I visited.
So I didn’t post the photo of the postcard because I can’t say much about Nha Trang. Instead, I cropped the stamps on the back.
I’ve always wondered about that speed skater.
 click to enlarge I sent this postcard to my grandma in February, 1991 from Hong Kong.
I’m so sorry this card is late. I spent last week in Nanjing, China for the Chinese New Year. I wanted to write to you from there, but I did not come across any postcards. So a postcard of Hong Kong will have to do! While I was in China, I did not speak English. It was often difficult to understand others, but hopefully my listening and speaking skills improved some.
When I look at this postcard, I’m more concerned with Hong Kong’s skyline than a freezing week in Nanjing.
Why? Because the caption on the back of the postcard reads: The new look of Central, Hong Kong.
I’m not sure when this photo was actually taken, but I doubt it was in 1991 or even 1990. Where are I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower and the Norman Foster-designed Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Building? The first was completed in 1990 and the second in 1985.
I’d think these buildings would appear in a photo of the Hong Kong skyline once they went up, no matter the angle at which it was taken.
If anyone knows when this photo was shot, please let me know.
 click to enlarge I sent this postcard to my grandma in June, 1991.
I am in a small town in the northeast of Thailand. It is a very quiet, relaxing place! The guest house where I am staying is right on the Mekong River, overlooking the country of Laos (on the other side of the river). I will meet my dad in Bangkok in a couple of days.
The postcard actually shows a drawing of Wat Arun in Bangkok, but as I wrote to my grandma, I sent it from the Thai-Laos border. I’d taken a train to Nong Khai to see Laos. Poor planning kept me from obtaining a visa to go to Vientiane. Nong Khai was the closest I could get.
Completely cut off from the rest of the world, the guesthouse had neither television or telephone. The owner, a Thai woman who’d lived in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, cooked delicious banana oatmeal for me every morning and told me about her travels.
For lunch one day I wandered to a riverfront cafe and ordered the hottest item on the menu, too naive to realize I needed rice to cool the burning in my mouth. The waiters laughed while I gulped ice water, to no avail, and brought me a plate of rice–on the house.
Another day I rented a bike and rode out to see enormous mythological statues. On my return trip, I stopped at a weavers’ guild that employed young girls to give them a skill and keep them out of prostitution.
Returning to Bangkok by overnight bus, I ate golden raisins for dinner and chatted for hours with the man seated next to me, an Indian of the Bahai Faith. When he heard I grew up miles from the Bahai Temple in Wilmette, Illinois, he spoke to me like an old friend.
 click to enlarge I wrote this postcard to my late grandmother in January, 1989.
I’m in Tahiti and will be here for another 2 1/2 weeks! Today we are going to see waterfalls like the one on the front of this postcard. It is pretty hot here and humid! I haven’t done much sightseeing because we spent last week at the beach. Happy New Year!
Who wouldn’t want to spend winter vacation in Tahiti, walking the black sand beaches and visiting waterfalls?
If only.
When my high school French teacher asked if anyone wanted to participate in an exchange with her niece in Tahiti, I jumped at it.
That winter I arrived in Papeete at 5 am, jet-lagged and grimy. My mom taught me to acclimate myself to the local time, so I forced myself to stay up all day. The family–a mom, younger step-father, and 16 year-old daughter–greeted me at the airport with a gardenia lei. I can still picture the delicate fragrance. Mmm.
Although I was 18, I was years behind Alexa, the daughter.
The week at the beach I wrote about in the postcard was a vacay from hell. Alexa and her boyfriend and a few of their friends (all 16 year-olds) got drunk every night, smoked pot every day, and one guy even locked himself in a bedroom for hours, listening to the same Pink Floyd songs over and over. I found solace at the retired neighbor’s bungalow, talking to the old French guy there and sharing his pineapple banana juice in a quart carton. He was the only adult around.
When Alexa brought me to school with her one day, the French kids sized me up and then ignored me, but the few Chinese and Tahitian ones slipped me sympathetic smiles.
Then there was New Year’s Eve. The custom in Tahiti, among the French at least, was to stay up all night. I almost begged Alexa’s mom and step-father to let me to stay home, joining them next door at their friendly neighbor’s whose pool I used during the day when Alexa went to school without me. But no one likes a party pooper, so I went along with Alexa and the beach crew.
At midnight, the DJ played U2’s New Year’s Day and a twenty-something guy flashed a vial of a white substance in front of my face, asking in French if I wanted some. Are you f*&@ing kidding me? I wanted to say. But I just turned my head and continued to sit alone. Alexa and her boyfriend were nowhere to be seen.
That month passed as slowly as a year, but I’m glad I went. When else would I’ve had the chance to stay in Tahiti for a month? And when I returned to college in February, I aced French class.
 click to enlarge This week I ventured much closer to home. In fact, I read a book that takes place in Chicago and my hometown of Evanston. You can’t get much closer than that.
I’d read rave reviews of Katherine Shonk’s debut novel, Happy Now? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) and recognized her name from high school. (She was a couple years ahead of me; I was so shy in school I never would have initiated a conversation with an upperclassman!)
Shonk’s main character, Claire, loses her husband on Valentine’s Day–to suicide. Only in her mid-30s, Claire tries to make sense of her marriage, her late husband, and herself as she picks up the pieces after his shocking death.
Death is never an easy subject to discuss with those who’ve been touched by the loss of a loved one, especially when it involves suicide. Shonk shows, in a humorous way, how people–and Hallmark cards–can be so insensitive. One of my favorite such scenes takes place when Claire goes to a suicide survivors’ support group.
Happy Now? is one of the best books I’ve read this summer. Shonk debuted with The Red Passport (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), a collection of short stories based in new Russia. I’ve just put that on my short list of to-read books and look forward to many more exciting stories from Shonk in the years to come.
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