"On the weekend we visited your grandfather's family, because his father worked for my father. It was a big treat and we ate foreign food (we went to a lot of Russian restaurants with different kinds of beef or chickens stews. I think we even had hot dogs one time). And my father was pretty advanced, he liked to introduce a lot of foreign things to us, which is why he took us to the movies. The first I ever saw was Romeo and Juliet, we all enjoyed it."
"We went back to Shanghai and moved into the French Quarter. First we rented a house, and then at the other side of the house we met some other young people who were also our age. It was the first contact we had with other children , until then it had just been my siblings and I."
"After the Japanese war we went back to Hankou, and we had a good life. The house was big, the yard was big and we rode bicycles. I tried to drive a jeep but then I just hit the door entrance right away! It wasn't a big accident fortunately."
"When the Japanese invaded China we hired a cargo ship and we went back home to Hankow. That was the last time we ever visited Lushan. A lot of government officials would visit that area. After dinner we always walked, and you know the Chinese General chiang kai-shek? We met him on the road, and once Uncle Michael had a handkerchief covering his eyes, we were playing hide and go seek, and he ran into the general. We were all so surprised, and so were his guards, but the general was very nice about it, we never forgot that.”
"The house was big so we were always running around. One of my aunt’s sister always came over to teach us English, and she visited maybe twice a week. So one day, my parents weren’t home so we knew they were coming, and she always brought one of her nephews, the same age as uncle Fred. So we tried to close and lock all the doors. By the time we tried to lock the last door they came in, and we got so upset. They kept on asking ‘what’s wrong? All the doors were locked!'"
"I went to provincial girls high school in a city that was close to Ci’an. We took a train from Baoji to SanYuan and for some reason life is tough but you always have fun with your friends. Because it was a boarding school, the food was horrible, nothing to eat. I was lucky I because had pocket money so I could go out and buy some food. Usually, my father's company had a branch office in other cities, so every week I would go there, take a bath then eat dinner there then go back to school."
" In the summertime, because Hankow is very hot, we always go to the mountain – they call Lushan Guilin – it’s close to Hankow. We have to take a ship from Yangzi River to the mountain. So we usually stayed there for quite a while, then our tutor would come with us. So every day he always takes a walk with us and we walked in the creek and at that time there’s a lot of stones, and the water is so clear and there’s a crab and sometime they have a snake, different color it scared your to death, apparently they were poisonous. But they do have a lot of small crab. We just tried to catch the crab. "
"My parents gradually, took two kids at a time to their place in interior China. I went with one of the distant aunts, we traveled a long distance. The trip was really tough, and the train was so crowded, and then even we take these ‘primitive carts’. The areas we passed through were very poor. During the trip all I remember is having cucumber, I got sick of cucumber, and then noodles and pork buns, that’s all we had. It took almost a month.”
