Saigon, April 30, 1975
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Saigon, April 30, 1975 Chinese postage When I traveled to China in my teens and twenties, I inevitably committed cultural faux pas. For instance, when I spent the summer of 1995 in China, I kept in touch with friends and family by writing letters. I had been using e-mail in Hong Kong for about a year at that point, [...] Shatin Floating Restaurant, circa 1964 Star Floating Restaurant, built 1986 Even though I lived in Hong Kong for five years, I never went to a true floating restaurant. In the early 1960s, my mom ate at Tai Pak Restaurant in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen district, where diners first boarded little sampans and were rowed out to the [...] Author Chris Lin with Tracey and Eli I love book signings. So when my friend Tracey told me about a book signing last Sunday with author Chris Lin, who writes bilingual Chinese-English children’s books, I was game. The Mandy and Pandy board book series is colorful, educational, and fun. And each book includes a CD of [...] When a Crocodile Eats the Sun I switched continents last week when I read When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (Little, Brown and Company, 2006) by Peter Godwin. Last year I did a memoir writing independent study with author Paula Bernstein. Some of the best advice she gave (and she gave me quite a bit) was [...] click to enlarge On Friday I packed the younger kids into the station wagon and headed to Trader Joe’s in search of shumai and coconut shrimp. But before I reached the frozen section, this fun card grabbed my attention. I love vintage travel tags. Along the top, I spotted stickers from Paris, Casablanca (Hotel Excelsior), Shanghai (Palace [...] Hong Kong postcard, 1994 click to enlarge This postcard is so Suzie Wong, yet I bought and sent it to my Grandma Blumberg in August, 1994, a month shy of my 24th birthday. I wrote to my grandma about my shared summer apartment and how I lived with a couple of people I didn’t know. Even though [...] Pago Pago advertisement, Chicago Tiki Room, Chicago The May issue of Travel + Leisure magazine features an article about Trader Vic’s, the old school tiki restaurant. The article even credits Vic Bergeron, the founder of the restaurant, with giving Americans the travel bug starting in the 1930s, when his first Trader [...] Postcard from Shanghai, 1995 This is the Shanghai I remember. Fifteen years and hundreds of glassy skyscrapers later, the city on this postcard exists no more. Notice the streets: few cars, some buses, and dozens of bicycles. As rustic as Shanghai was back then, it was still the most cosmopolitan city in China. Every time we stopped in [...] National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Postcard from Taipei, 1991 I wrote this postcard to my dad’s mother in 1991 when I went to Taipei for spring break. The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, to me, was the symbol of Taipei back then. I love the description of the building on the back of the postcard: From a corner [...] |
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Copyright © 2010 Susan Blumberg-Kason - All Rights Reserved |
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