I sent this postcard in July, 1991 to my grandma in Albany, New York a week before I boarded the Trans-Mongolian train to Moscow.
Dad and I are now in Beijing, China. We are having a nice trip. In Thailand we stayed at a hotel, but in China we have stayed with families of Dad’s students. Everyone is so nice. I will leave on Wednesday for Moscow. The train from China to Moscow will take 5 1/2 days. I’ve met some people who will take the same train. They are mostly in their late 20s and early 30s and from Europe or Australia. I’m really looking forward to it.
My dad had flown to Thailand that summer to meet me, where I ended up after a couple weeks of traveling solo in Vietnam and Cambodia. From Thailand we stopped in Hong Kong for two days before flying to Shanghai. There we stayed with the family of one of his favorite students. They took us to Zhou Enlai’s old house and the famous Bund. We spent one day at the American consulate, trying to help his student’s cousin obtain a student visa to the US, to no avail.
We went on to Beijing and stayed with another student’s family on Jianguomanwai, across from the Nikko Hotel, the only Western artifact I saw in Beijing all summer. I’d been to both Shanghai and Beijing before this trip, pre-Tiananmen.
I haven’t set foot in Beijing since that July in 1991.
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