My first trip to China was in the Summer of 1981, at the end of a year of studying Chinese in Taiwan. Sister Allison and her fiancé announced they would marry in March, and so I used the second half of my roundtrip air ticket to attend their wedding. This was earlier than I intended to return, but didn’t want to be the only one in my extended family to miss the celebration.
My parents, recognizing the choice I made, very generously offered me another ticket to Asia, so that I could continue my studies. Considering their apprehension at my initial decision to abandon civilization (or so it seemed) for a year abroad, this was quite an endorsement. Dad worked with a travel agent friend to maximize my flexibility and stopovers (and minimize the price, the princely sum of about $800, roundtrip). And, so, at the end of my studies in Taiwan, I flew to Hong Kong to join a tour group heading into China.
To put the time frame into perspective, the United States had 20 months earlier broken relations with Taiwan, and established diplomatic ties with China. I had spent the previous year explaining to Taiwanese friends that we Americans didn’t really hate “Free China,” but that we had to recognize reality. It was a tough sell.
While I was sorting out my visa in Hong Kong, I happened to see dozens of people standing outside a television retail shop watching the wedding of Charles and Diana (July 29, 1981). The first space shuttle had flown three months earlier, but we still didn’t know what AIDS, MTV, or MS-DOS would come to mean.
Travel 1.0
At the time, American tourists were required to be part of a state-run tour group, so I dutifully joined a 10-day long trip to Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. Immediately after our train crossed the border from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, I began shooting high-speed film with my new Pentax ME Super 35mm camera. I set the fastest shutter speed available, and probably used ASA400 Kodachrome color film, to capture clear pictures of objects in motion. The results were still blurry, but recognizable: farmers plowing rice paddies behind water buffalo. Today, the city is only minutes from Hong Kong by fast train, and home to 10 million people.
Everything was exciting! I had spent the previous two years struggling with Chinese, in my final year of college and then in Taiwan. Here in China proper, my studies would be tested. Sign boards whizzed past too fast to read, but presenting a glimpse of a world that would consume me for the next four decades.
Our first night was spent at the White Swan Hotel, on historic Shamian [sandy faced] Island in the heart of the city. Because Qing Dynasty mandarins were determined to limit the influence of outsiders, this was where pre-20th century foreign barbarians were confined. They were forbidden to bring families with them, and were forced to limit their business and social activities to a small area. Some of the buildings on the leafy main street were 100-year-old European designs. One bore the name “City Bank of New York” chiseled in the stone face: the first local office of what would become Citibank.
Guangzhou didn’t leave much of an impression on me, at least in comparison to Shanghai and Beijing. We visited the Sun Yat-sen Memorial, an obligatory stop to pay respects to the only Chinese leader revered by both communists and nationalists. We ate Cantonese food, which was never a favorite, but particularly so when the basic ingredients didn’t seem very fresh. And, we drove around in a 16-seater mini bus, and admired the city from a distance. The Qing mandarins would have easily recognized China Travel Service’s attitude toward foreign infections.
Shanghai
That night, a storm blew in and delayed our flight to Shanghai by several hours. When we finally arrived, probably around 2am, we were met by a local tour guide who suggested that we might like to sleep in the next day. This was met by a resounding ‘NO!” from the group. We had only a single day and night in Shanghai, and we were determined to make the most of it. As a compromise, the planned 8am kick-off was pushed back to 9am.
Early the next morning, probably shortly after 6am, I slipped out of the hotel and hit the streets. Wary of losing my way, I decided to set a square path, two blocks to the right, and repeat three more times until I returned to the hotel.
My first turn was down a narrow alley, to my first unscripted encounter with a mainlander, a man brushing his teeth. He squatted outside a red wooden door, using a hosepipe no more than a foot off the ground. He was much more surprised to see me than I was to see him, although that first impression is still vivid.
I made my way back to the hotel for breakfast with the group without incident, pleased to have had a chance to see the “real China” up close. Much of the rest of the day was tightly scheduled and closely managed. We toured an old foreign house in the French Quarter that had been turned into a research facility for light goods. Women sat at desks throughout the still-impressive rooms making dolls from clay. They created the faces via a couple of swift gestures with a sharpened piece of wood, and then moved on. I guessed that they were working out the most efficient way to churn out hundreds of dolls a day.
The highlight of the short Shanghai stay was a visit to the Bund, the waterfront “face” of the city. Here, we were turned loose for an hour to relax in the park. Two very special incidents stand out.
My tour companions were mostly middle-aged (and older) Americans, and one young teenage boy. As a group, we were instantly the subject of intense interest, and quickly surrounded by curious folks. One of us had a Polaroid camera, and she took a picture of a Shanghainese woman holding a baby. This was done without asking permission, and elicited a sharp rebuke from the subject. To her great credit, my fellow tourist simply pulled the photo out of her camera and handed it to the woman.
Madam Shanghai snatched the picture, possibly not knowing what it was. She continued to berate the photographer, while gesturing sharply with the hand that held the photo. Slowly, she stopped waving her hand and really looked at what it held: an emerging Polaroid picture of her and her child. In a second, her attitude changed from outraged victim to grateful recipient of what might well have been a priceless gift. Mrs Tourist then took another photo, of the woman with tears in her eyes. That one, she kept.
The second incident arose from my own determination to find one of the most important buildings in modern Shanghai history: Communist Party Headquarters. As I set out at a brisk pace, the teenage tourist asked if he could come with me, and I agreed with a warning that I was on a very specific mission. No problem; he just needed time away from his family.
We half ran down the long row of colonial architecture buildings that lined the waterfront. Building after building, I studied the plaques bolted onto the walls. This one is a bank, that one a government office, the next an unfamiliar character followed by “social association.” Then, I found it: Party Headquarters, the place where Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, and her “Gang of Four” cronies orchestrated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Wow. For a student of modern Chinese politics, the Cultural Revolution was one of the most important periods. From 1966 until Mao died in 1976, China was consumed by raging “red” politics. Storied veteran revolutionaries were purged, or worse. Young, inexperienced radicals seized power at Mao’s behest, and drove the country into the ground. Deng Xiaoping, one of the top victims, had only just returned to power four years earlier, and it was his China that we were seeing. My studies were becoming real.
Beijing
On to Beijing, and the main body of the trip. We all wanted to see the most iconic places, and because none of us had the slightest idea how to arrange transportation or buy tickets, it was very useful to be corralled into an organized tour group. In four days, we saw the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the blue-domed Temple of Heaven, the garden-like Ming Emperors’ Tombs, the Summer Palace, and the Great Wall.
Each was fascinating, and largely unknown to me. My study was modern China, not ancient. Still, one doesn’t touch the subject without wading through the dynasties and philosophers. Here was the garden where princes drank wine and competed to compose poetry. That building was where the emperor celebrated the harvest. This stone boat was where the navy’s budget was wasted, allowing the European powers to humiliate the Manchus.
Our hotel was the former Soviet Union staff compound, the Friendship Hotel. Here, we encountered the strongest sense of bureaucratic privilege. Staff walked into rooms without knocking, monitored phones and mail, and made absolutely sure that no local Chinese people were admitted. This was my first real taste of authoritarianism, however mild. The staff were also scrupulously honest. My pen ran out of ink, so I threw it in the waste bin. The next day, it was back on the desk.
Some years later, I returned to the Friendship Hotel on a business trip to the city. As I was walking the grounds, I encountered Fred Wakeman, one of my Chinese history professors at Cal. Dr Wakeman was the scholar-in-residence at the US embassy in Beijing, a post that rotated among American scholars so that more of them could have the opportunity to conduct research on a year-long basis.
Recent visitors will be very familiar with the explosion of market capitalism that has engulfed China in the past 40 years. On this first trip, however, there was the state-run Friendship Store, the only department store in town. As tourists, we were very welcome to spend our money there; locals were not.
China’s economists determined early on that foreign tourists were an excellent source of scarce hard currency. However, because prices were so low, there was a two-fold danger: rapid depletion of anything of interest, especially antiques; and inflation. In an attempt to curb these tendencies, foreigners – tourists and residents alike – were compelled to use a special currency, and that money could only be used to buy certain things.
The Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs) were highly valued by locals, as they allowed the purchase of luxury items from places like the Friendship Store. They remained a part of the economy from 1980 to 1994, but by the later years they were widely available in major cities to anyone will to pay a premium. The exchange rate for FECs was several times higher than that of the common currency, the Renminbi. A meal in a restaurant might cost a local resident the equivalent of $1, whereas a tourist would pay $4 or more. Good hotels, airlines, upper end restaurants, tourist attractions, and the Friendship Store only accepted FEC.
The excursions to the Ming Emperor’s Tombs and the Great Wall were predictably awe-inspiring. Twenty-one years later, in 2002, I had the wonderful opportunity to take my father to many of the same places I visited on this trip. It was great to see his reaction, and to be reminded of my own first impressions.
Tiananmen Square
On our last night in China, we were informed that we would be taken to the world-famous Peking Opera. I had seen these performances in Taiwan, and was not a fan. So, I asked the young woman who was our local guide if I might skip that honor. She was puzzled, but my explanation was accepted. I suggested that what I really wanted to do was to wander around Tiananmen Square. On a hot summer night, thousands of people would bring their blankets and picnic dinners to the square, to enjoy the breeze and meet friends.
Oh, dear. That wouldn’t do. How would I manage? Well, I reminded her, I do speak some Chinese, and I could get a taxi at the Beijing Hotel across the street when it was time to return to our own hotel. Of course! You’re able to take care of yourself! No problem.
That was very surprising. At every other turn, we were strictly controlled, but here in the heart of the nation, I was free to do as I pleased. I spent a very pleasant few hours sitting on the steps of the Monument to the People’s Heroes of the Revolution, a few dozen yards from Mao’s Mausoleum, chatting with people.
Tiananmen Square! The site of so much modern history! Here Chairman Mao stood above the gate to the Forbidden City on October 1st, 1949, and proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic. A generation later, he greeted a million teen-aged and highly radicalized Red Guard fanatics, his shock troops in the assault on the power of his colleagues. And, a scant five years ago, workers and intellectuals poured into the square to lay wreaths at the very monument where I was sitting in 1981. They were remembering the recently passed Premier Zhou Enlai, while simultaneously expressing their disapproval of the Gang of Four and their recent re-purging of Deng Xiaoping.
The details of what transpired in my brief talk with the people around me have faded, but I imagine it was mostly “Where are you from?” [American]; “Where did you learn Chinese?” [Taiwan]; and “What do you think of New China?” [Very nice, very clean.] The crowd around me might have been a hundred people, and a one or two used the opportunity to practice their English, but neither of us was equipped to manage much of an in-depth conversation.
Post script
The memories of that first trip to China are still surprisingly fresh, even after all these years and many subsequent visits. My return trip included a layover in Japan, my first of several visits there. Among the most vivid memories of Tokyo were being stunned at how expensive everything seemed to be. The exchange rate was ¥240:US$1, about half what it is today. That meant that a simple meal cost about $10, rather than $20-30 that it would now.
I walked the streets, because I couldn’t figure out the subway or buses. Outside many restaurants were displays of the food on offer, plastic reproductions that looked almost good enough to eat. One place very thoughtfully had prices next to the plates, and since the Japanese and Chinese use the same characters for numbers, I could actually see what it would cost! Great success!
Back in California, I prepared to enter grad school at Cal. During my first week, I invited several classmates to come to my apartment to see the 35mm slides I had taken in China that summer. Very few of our professors had been to China (aside from Professor Shi, the language teacher born in what was then Beiping), and none of the other students. So, I found the way to break the ice and establish a few friendships that lasted many years.
(c) Santa Rosa September 2026
