Last week I posted a card I sent from Beijing to my paternal grandma days before I boarded the Trans-Mongolian. The five and a half day train ride took me to Moscow. From there, I traveled by train to Budapest and then on to Prague before flying home to Chicago by [...]]]>

Postcard from Budapest, 1991

Last week I posted a card I sent from Beijing to my paternal grandma days before I boarded the Trans-Mongolian. The five and a half day train ride took me to Moscow. From there, I traveled by train to Budapest and then on to Prague before flying home to Chicago by way of New York.

In this postcard, I wrote:

I’m in Budapest now. It is so beautiful! There are so many wonderful, little streets with tempting shops that sell all sorts of Hungarian crafts. The prices are not too cheap, though. I really enjoyed Moscow! Unfortunately, while I was on the train from Beijing to Moscow, two girls in my room caught colds. When I arrived in Moscow, I almost had no voice. My cold is getting better everyday, though. I will go to Prague on the 21st and then stay for 5 days before returning to the US! The next time you hear from me, I’ll be in the US!

I love shopping when I travel, but some countries I visited that summer didn’t have much. In Vietnam I had an ao dai tailored and in Cambodia I bought a couple of temple rubbings, similar to the ones my mom bought there 25 years earlier. But in China there was little to buy apart from the chinoiserie in the Friendship Stores (and I’d already bought plenty of that on previous trips) and in Moscow it was like pulling teeth to have someone wait on me at Gum. I bought a set of matryoshka dolls on Arbat Street and lots of brown bread.

So when I arrived in Budapest and found myself surrounded by these craft stores, I went crazy. For five days, I perused the ceramic dolls, paprika tins, and Hungarian peasant blouses as if it was my first time shopping. In 1991 there were no ATMs where I went after I left Hong Kong. So by the time I reached Hungary, I didn’t have a lot of cash left.

In the end, I bought some paprika for gifts and a little ceramic doll. As much as I loved Budapest with the beautiful hills and the peaceful river, I was anxious to get to Prague and for some naive reason thought I’d see the same things in Prague.

The greatest lesson I’ve learned in all these years of traveling is that when you see something you want, don’t assume you’ll see it again. So if you want it, buy it. Budapest was probably one of the best shopping cities I visited that summer. I wished I’d bought more there.

My mom and I sent this postcard from Indonesia in 1991 to my grandma (her mother-in-law).

Susan and  I are having a wonderful trip. I never dreamed that Indonesia was so interesting. It is very hot, but we splurged on a very nice hotel in Yogyakarta, so didn’t suffer too much–it was nice and [...]]]>

Borobudur, 1991

My mom and I sent this postcard from Indonesia in 1991 to my grandma (her mother-in-law).

Susan and  I are having a wonderful trip. I never dreamed that Indonesia was so interesting. It is very hot, but we splurged on a very nice hotel in Yogyakarta, so didn’t suffer too much–it was nice and cool inside. We are on our way to Bali now.

Then I finished the rest:

Yesterday we went to the temple in the picture of this postcard. It had been covered by lava for hundreds of years. There is so much to do here. I wish we had more time!

Borobudur was fantastic. I hadn’t yet seen Angkor Wat, but even if I had, I don’t think I would have thought Borobudur lowbrow. It wasn’t as haunting as its Cambodian counterpart, but still. To imagine it being under hardened lava for centuries is quite amazing.

When my mom wrote that we splurged on a nice hotel, she really meant she splurged and I paid her what a youth hostel would cost. After her travels around the world in the 60s, my mom no longer roughed it in the 90s. You should have seen where we stayed in Kuala Lumpur!

Here we go again. I know I’ve already posted plenty about 1930s Shanghai and how it’s become not just a genre unto itself but a downright cliche. Still, I just love that period and can’t get enough.

When I was last in Shanghai 15 years ago, the postcards with present-day images weren’t too [...]]]>

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Here we go again. I know I’ve already posted plenty about 1930s Shanghai and how it’s become not just a genre unto itself but a downright cliche. Still, I just love that period and can’t get enough.

When I was last in Shanghai 15 years ago, the postcards with present-day images weren’t too exciting. Cranes rose up like dinosaurs across the Huangpu (Whampoa) in Pudong. Huaihai Road was waking up after decades of decay. Nanjing Lu was lined with dumpy state-run department stores. Yawn.

What excited me were relics from the past. I found postcards like this one, depicting 1930s Shanghai. I think I bought this one in the Peace Hotel, another gem from before the revolution. I didn’t remember seeing 1930s Shanghai advertised at all in 1991, the last time I’d been there. Besides the postcards and the Peace Hotel, I spotted Chinese paperbacks about notorious warlords and gangsters. China was embracing it’s bourgeois past and I loved it.

In this postcard to my grandma in Albany, New York, I wrote:

We are in Shanghai now and just arrived by ship from Wuhan. The boat ride was fun, but I am glad to be in a large, modern city. Shanghai has changed so much since I was last here. Parts are just like Hong Kong, but the old city is still the same as before.

I must say I wasn’t truthful about the boat ride, but if my memoir is ever published, you can read all about it there. I shudder to think about those horrible trough toilets on that boat.

I’m sure if I step foot in Shanghai again, I won’t recognize much of it. And I know I’ll miss the old city, a throwback to the past.

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 [...]]]>

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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.

Last night I broke the cardinal rule of responsible parents: I kept my child out quite late.

Mao’s Last Dancer opened in theaters on August 20, and I was desperate to see it.

Last year I stumbled upon Li Cunxin’s memoir of the same name at my public library. His story was incredible. Plucked [...]]]>

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Last night I broke the cardinal rule of responsible parents: I kept my child out quite late.

Mao’s Last Dancer opened in theaters on August 20, and I was desperate to see it.

Last year I stumbled upon Li Cunxin’s memoir of the same name at my public library. His story was incredible. Plucked from a cold village in Shandong province at an early age and sent to train as a ballet dancer in Beijing, Li became a star in Madame Mao ballets promoting the revolution. Then when a visiting group from the Houston Ballet met Li in Beijing in 1981, he was offered a three month internship in Houston. The Chinese government wasn’t sure his revolutionary fervor was strong enough to resist the evils of the West, but one sympathetic instructor endorsed Li’s candidacy. And the rest is history.

The only theaters in the Chicago area showing this film were miles and miles away. So after I put the younger kids to bed and my husband came home, I drove 25 miles with my 12 year-old. We found our seats just as Li Cunxin came off the plane in Houston.

I thought the film was very true to Li’s memoir. The visuals of rural Shandong juxtaposed against the glittery discos of Houston almost seemed more striking on film than in print. The only part that seemed rushed in the film was the part about Li’s first marriage. Out of the blue, he had marital problems and after one fight, they’d broken up. But that really wasn’t central to his story, so I can see how the screenwriter would skim over that section.

My son is exhausted this morning, but he loved the movie and appreciated the invitation to see it. He has a better understanding of the climate and landscape of his father’s childhood in rural China. And maybe even how that generation of Chinese youth, who were taken from home at an early age to serve in Madame Mao’s propaganda arts institutions, lost more than just their youth. Like Li’s first wife, it’s something I learned a thing or two about the hard way.

This week I read Mingmei Yip’s beautiful novel, Petals from the Sky (Kensington Books, 2010). I felt drawn to her book before I even opened it. She’d taught at my graduate school alma mater, The Chinese University of Hong, and now lives in New York, my favorite city in the US.

But to [...]]]>

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This week I read Mingmei Yip’s beautiful novel, Petals from the Sky (Kensington Books, 2010). I felt drawn to her book before I even opened it. She’d taught at my graduate school alma mater, The Chinese University of Hong, and now lives in New York, my favorite city in the US.

But to be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d get into it easily. Set in Hong Kong, Paris, China, and New York, what’s not to like, right? The story centers around a young Cantonese woman who becomes torn between a quiet life as a Buddhist nun or the wife of a gweilo doctor from New York. The Buddhist nun thing seemed a bit heavy for these sultry summer days.

Soon after I started the book, I realized Mingmei Yip dished up exactly what I was looking for: a fun, thrilling novel. Her writing is flowery and poetic and rich with humor. And in the end, I loved the Buddhist part of the story the best.

My favorite character was the protagonist’s mother: a glass-is-half-empty matron who always came up on the losing end of love. She fears the same for her daughter, yet warns her against joining the order of nuns. Meng Ning, the protagonist, is down to earth, intelligent (Sorbonne PhD), and innocent. I wasn’t too keen on her boyfriend Michael, though. For a macho neurosurgeon, he seemed way too needy and possessive. Throughout much of the book, Yip foreshadowed his anger as if it would later become a deal breaker. But Meng Ning doesn’t seem to take offense, even when he yells at her and acts like a baby.

All in all, though, the book is a fun read and one that I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys cross-cultural romantic stories, learning about Buddhism (but not in a dry or academic way), and a plot that causes you to think about what’s important in our short lives.

“People in Hong Kong dress up,” my mom warned. She was going on memory from her last time there in ’65, when [...]]]> In my posts from last week, I wore the same lavender skirt in several of the photos spanning my first year in Hong Kong. Yes, I traveled lightly when I moved to Hong Kong.

“People in Hong Kong dress up,” my mom warned. She was going on memory from her last time there in ’65, when people in the US dressed up, too.

But I was happy to pack two dresses I could wear to nice dinners. Back in 1990, college girls dressed up in the same way as forty-year olds. Now it’s the other way around. It’s a good thing I gave those dresses away decades ago.

When it came time to leave Hong Kong and set out for Southeast Asia, the USSR, and Eastern Europe, I donated some clothes to the Caritas Lodge in Kowloon. I also sent those two aforementioned dresses and knick nacks back to my parents’ home in Chicago. For the next few months, I traveled with a couple t-shirts, a couple pastel sundresses, a sweater, and the lavender skirt. Oh, and one pair of sandals.

My rule of thumb is to pack what you think you’ll need, then take out half of the clothes and shoes and reassess what’s left. I usually take another 40-50% out and call it a day.

With three kids, two of whom still use car seats and strollers, packing lightly is impossible. Just thinking about all the diapers, wipes, changes of clothes, and other baby accoutrements sends my head splitting.

So when I travel sans enfants, it feels especially liberating to walk onto an airplane with nothing but a purse and a good book.

It’s Saturday morning again. I don’t know if it’s just me, but these weeks seem to fly, especially as the summer comes to an end. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

To round out my week of looking back at my stay in Hong Kong 20 years ago, I remember how I spent [...]]]>

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It’s Saturday morning again. I don’t know if it’s just me, but these weeks seem to fly, especially as the summer comes to an end. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

To round out my week of looking back at my stay in Hong Kong 20 years ago, I remember how I spent my Saturday mornings back then. I taught English and developed a close friendship with another expat family.

A friend of one of my roommates had a teaching gig in Taikoo Shing, conversing in English with a Japanese housewife and her two school age children. This friend couldn’t continue, so asked me if I wanted to take over. I’d never taught English, but Dora assured me that wasn’t a problem. I was a native English speaker, after all.

So I took a train and two subway lines to Taikoo every Saturday, starting out around 8 am and arriving a little before my 10 am start time. An hour with the kids followed by an hour speaking with Mrs. Yoshizawa. Then she cooked us a huge Japanese lunch. We discussed the health merits of Japanese food over steaming bowls of domburi or udon. Each lunch was always accompanied by small dishes of seaweed salad, grilled octopus, or tiny salted fish.

When I traveled to Japan for a few weeks over winter break that year, the Yoshizawas did, too. Mrs. Yoshizawa met me in Tokyo and showed me Ueno Park. She treated me to a late lunch and then we met again in Hong Kong a week later to resume class.

In this photo, taken on my last class with the family, they blindfolded me and spun me around a few times. Then they let me loose with a play samurai sword and a small watermelon. The kids giggled as the big gaijin stumbled to find the watermelon to no avail. I think Norimasa eventually struck it on his third or fourth attempt.

My 1990 Hong Kong retrospective wouldn’t be complete without a book review. While I didn’t read Jan Morris’s Hong Kong (Vintage, 1997) this week, I did read an earlier version back in 1990.

For anyone who’s been to Hong Kong or who wants to learn more about it, Morris’s Hong Kong [...]]]>

Hong Kong by Jan Morris

My 1990 Hong Kong retrospective wouldn’t be complete without a book review. While I didn’t read Jan Morris’s Hong Kong (Vintage, 1997) this week, I did read an earlier version back in 1990.

For anyone who’s been to Hong Kong or who wants to learn more about it, Morris’s Hong Kong is a must-read.

She writes about many of the things true to my heart: history, architecture, displaced people, and the future of the territory.

This book was on a reading list when I first arrived in Hong Kong, so many of the Americans on my program read it that year. Then in 1997, Morris added an update on the upcoming handover, so I re-read the book then.

I spent a lot of time reading for fun when I should have been studying for exams, especially during my first year in Hong Kong. Besides Hong Kong, I remember reading that year Sterling Seagrave’s The Soong Dynasty (Harper Perennial, 1986) and A Cambodian Odyssey by Haing Ngor (Scribner, 1988), along with a few James Clavell novels like Noble House and King Rat.

When I moved to Hong Kong 20 years ago, I had good joss.

It can be scary to live with strangers, especially when you come from different backgrounds and countries.

During my first few days at the Chinese University in 1990, I was paired with another American exchange student, sharing a metal bunk bed [...]]]>

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When I moved to Hong Kong 20 years ago, I had good joss.

It can be scary to live with strangers, especially when you come from different backgrounds and countries.

During my first few days at the Chinese University in 1990, I was paired with another American exchange student, sharing a metal bunk bed in the newest hostel (or dormitory) on campus. Then once orientation ended, we were scattered around campus and placed with local roommates in older hostels. When I met up with the other other exchange students in my program, they reported positive things about their roommates. But they mostly hung out with other exchange students, drinking at the Wanch and Ned Kelly’s.

My case was different.

My roommates quickly became my best friends. We ate in dark Shanghainese restaurants and outdoor daipaidong stalls. They invited me to their homes (where they returned every weekend) and out to eat with their families, braving the crowds at the Shatin floating restaurant or eating off banana leaves at Thai restaurants.

During the week we ate at one of several university canteens (cafeterias) or they showed me how to roll maki, which they learned during their own study abroad years in Japan. We celebrated our birthdays with cakes from Maxim’s or Maria’s bakeries. I can still picture the fluffy whipped cream filling and the fresh melon, kiwi, and berries on top.

We rode ancient double-decker buses to the bowels of Kowloon, where we shopped at fabric markets and patronized stay-at-home tailors to have suits custom made.

Hong Kong is crowded and small, but when I wandered around by myself, I never felt lonely. My first year there was all the more special because I got to see it through my roommates’ eyes. Even now, we keep in touch through e-mail, Facebook, and holiday cards.