Yesterday I went through some old letters and postcards I’d sent to my paternal grandmother in the 1990s when I lived in Hong Kong. I got a bit out of control on Instagram (I’m susanbkason there) last night. It’d been a long time since I’d looked at these letters. Just as I found a story from my passport stamps, I saw the same in these letters.
Almost 19 years to the day, I moved to Hong Kong. This is an aerogramme I sent my grandma a day after I arrived. (And incidentally, today is the Dragon Boat Festival in Hong Kong.)
The following year, in 1995, I was a married woman and sent this cute thank you note to my grandma for her wedding gift. It’s so East Meet West.
What stands out in 1996 is that the postcard in the back cost more to send than the letter in the foreground. Maybe postage went up in those few months, or perhaps I didn’t have a postcard stamp and just put a regular first class airmail stamp on it.
This letter is significant because it’s dated on the last day of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. The handover to China would take place that evening at midnight. I remember the post office was crowded June 30.
And 1998, the Year of the Tiger. The year I left Hong Kong for my new life in San Francisco. It wouldn’t last long, but I had no way of knowing that back then.
Just for fun, this is a postcard I sent my grandmother as I was completing my very first year in Hong Kong back in 1991. (I studied there for the 1990-91 academic year).
The captions of this postcard: The new look of Central.