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 … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2010
Book of the week–Happy Now?
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 … [Read more...]
Ambassador Hotel, Hong Kong
When I was younger, I used to collect matchboxes from my travels. Before I turned 20, I had bowls of them from South Korea, Tahiti, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Canada, and places across the US. (The only matchbooks I saw in China back there were plain white, so I didn't … [Read more...]
Postcard pretty
Yesterday I enjoyed a delightful lunch with fellow alumni from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The director of the alumni association was in town and brought us all a package of these beautiful postcards.Twenty years ago this summer I flew off to Hong Kong to start my … [Read more...]
China tours, 1981
I love this 1981 ad for China tours. This poor guy looks like he just returned from the Long March.The text in this ad reads:China has only recently begun to develop its potential as a destination for the traveller.That's kind of an understatement.Back then, you … [Read more...]