Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 1

 

[At Christmastime in 1980, I took a trip to the People’s Republic of China.  The country had only recently opened to foreign tourists and the only way one could visit the PRC at that time was as part of an organized tour group.  Only certain officially designated tour agencies could book tours to China.  I signed up with Inter Pacific Travel-In-China, which had an office on Madison Avenue at 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. 

[The trip I booked ran from Friday, 19 December 1980, with our departure from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Sunday, 4 January 1981, with our departure from Hong Kong and return to New York City.  That was another restriction of traveling to the PRC in the early ’80s: you had to enter and leave China through Hong Kong, then still a British colony (until 1997, when sovereignty over the city was returned to China).  Direct flights into the People’s Republic still weren’t available yet; they weren’t to come for a few more years.

[Around 1978, Deng Xiaoping (1904-97), de facto successor to Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and paramount leader of the PRC, implemented China’s Open-Door Policy, encouraging foreign tourism and investment.  (This was the second so-named program in China’s history; an earlier Open-Door policy was instigated in the late Qing era at the turn of the 20th century.)  The first steps were tentative, but by 1980, as new hotels and other accommodations for visitors were begun, the flow of travelers from abroad increased. 

[My parents had made a trip to China a few years earlier and then travelers had to be part of a special group, such as, say, teachers or lawyers, or organization, like a union or university alumni association.  (Pan American Airways, for example, had gotten permission to bring visitors to the People’s Republic in 1978.)  My folks, for instance, traveled with the Smithsonian Institution of which they were members.  Individuals or families couldn’t visit China at that time on their own, and private agencies weren’t authorized to arrange tours.

[By the time I went, tourism had opened up some, but, as we’ll see, the country was just creating the facilities and infrastructure to accommodate and manage large numbers of foreign tourists.  My group was still an experiment in hosting ordinary travelers.  Some hotels in which we stayed were still under construction when we arrived; there simply hadn’t been any tourist hotels in China designed to accommodate foreigners for almost 30 years.

[Among the other restrictions on foreign visitors was the ban on travelling anywhere you felt like.  A formal itinerary had to be drawn up and followed—no ad hoc side trips would be permitted.  And though a travel agency like IPTIC could book the trip and make out the itinerary, once we entered China we would be turned over to the China International Travel Service, or CITS, the official government tourist office, to guide and monitor us while traveling in the country. 

[We had “guides” (read: ‘minders’) from the main CITS office out of which our group was administered—ours happened to be the Wuxi office of the Nanjing branch; it was apparently an arbitrary decision—and two actual guides for each city we visited.  The head-office minder went everywhere with us, but the local guides were the ones who explained what we were seeing, answered questions, and gave us the history of the sites we visited.

[Tourism rules changed incrementally over the next several years.  Eventually individuals and families could make a trip, though it still had to be booked through an authorized agency and an itinerary had to be made—but the group or organization was no longer required.  I believe that just a few years after my visit, tourists could even pay for souvenirs, meals, and hotels with credit cards like Visa and MasterCard.

[As you see, by the way, sometimes I’ll be referring to the PRC simply as ‘China.’  I’m not forgetting that ‘China’ can also refer to the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan or that Hong Kong, even when it was a British colony, is also ‘China.’  I’m not overlooking those facts, nor am I making any kind of political statement; I’m just being colloquial.

[As I wrote in my introduction to “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 1” (11 July 2021), I’m not going to censor my 34-year-old self—though I may explain or comment on my reportage and I’ll clarify facts where I think it’s necessary.  I’ll expand abbreviations and correct misspellings and other writing errors, and I’ll also probably break up long paragraphs in the journal to make reading easier on the blog.  Otherwise, I plan to leave the content of what I wrote 41 years ago as it was, warts and all.

[An explanation of my commentary format: insertions I’ve made since the writing of the journal in ’80 are enclosed in square brackets.  If the comment is also italicized, then it’s based on information that dates from after 1980—information I couldn’t have known at the time.  (I make an exception for life dates that I’ve added; I think it’s self-evident that if someone’s died after 1980, I wouldn’t have known it at the time of my trip.)

[A note on the romanized spellings of the names of Chinese cities such as Guangzhou, formerly Canton, and Beijing, formerly Peking: in 1979, the Chinese government mandated that all foreign-language publications of the PRC use the pinyin romanizations instead of the old Wade-Giles system.  Western publications began conforming to the Chinese spellings soon after—though in 1980, both versions of the romanized names were still in use even in China, especially in tourist materials.

[(The same system was also applied to people’s names, so, for instance, Mao Tse-tung became Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai became Zhou Enlai; communist party chairman Deng Xiaoping’s name was romanized in Wade-Giles as Teng Hsiao-p’ing and President Xi Jinping of the PRC would be Hsi Chin-p’ing.) 

[Today, the Wade-Giles transliteration is rarely used in the People’s Republic or abroad, though it can still be found in old documents and publications.  In the Republic of China on Taiwan, Wade-Giles is still common for transliterating names and words.

[Some tourist information in the PRC still used the old Wade-Giles transliterations, so the usage in my journal was mixed.  That’s because the guides and the CITS materials they handed out used both despite the official ukase.  I’ll try to provide both the obsolete forms and the currently preferred ones.  In my inserted commentary, I’ll use mostly the pinyin romanizations.

[(Some uses of the old forms have become so well-known that they haven’t been changed.  Readers will see that Peking duck, the famous Chinese meal, isn’t renamed “Beijing duck” and the well-known Chinese opera style called Peking opera still often goes by that name.

[(One further note about the Chinese personal names I use in this transcription: in most instances—whether in pinyin or Wade-Giles—all are in Chinese style, with the family name first and the given name second.  So Mao Zedong’s surname is ‘Mao’ and Sun Yat-sen’s is ‘Sun.’  (Some Chinese who live, work, or are published in the West have westernized their names, putting their family names last as we do in the U.S.  I. M. [Ieoh Ming] Pei, the renowned American architect, is an example; his surname was ‘Pei.’)]

EN ROUTE & ARRIVAL

New York/Anchorage/Tokyo/Hong Kong – Friday-Saturday, 19-20 December 1980

Finally left JFK – late take-off – ca. 12:30 p.m. [EST.]  Minor turbulence delayed release from seat belts.  Otherwise uneventful flight to Anchorage.

Magnificent sight flying over Alaskan mountains – Mount McKinley [now officially called Denali] on our right as we came in.

[I didn’t note in my journal that I had been offered a choice of airlines for the flight to Hong Kong: I could fly on Japan Airlines or an American carrier—probably Trans World Airlines (TWA) or Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), but since I didn’t book that way, I don’t remember.

[I expressly chose JAL because, though the IPTIC Tour Guidelines said that in the PRC all meals except breakfast would be Chinese, I couldn’t wait and I thought that on JAL, I’d get at least Japanese food.  (In 1980, airlines still served actual food on board; they even competed to outdo one another for the best in-flight cuisine in the industry!)  Unfortunately, I misjudged and didn’t get anything but Western food until we hit Guangzhou (Canton).]

Prices are unbelievable in Anchorage!  $1.25 for a glass of milk – $2.25 for a hot dog!  [That’s the equivalent of $4.15 and $7.47 in 2021.  This was all long before my 2003 visit to Alaska; see “The Last Frontier,” posted on Rick On Theater on 26 March, 5 and 30 April, and 10 May 2014.]

Late take-off again for Tokyo.  New York-Anchorage was 7½ hours; Anchorage-to-Tokyo was about 6 hours.  Also uneventful.  Got very weary.  Read China guidebook and [Craig] Claiborne article [a December 1978 food article, “Dining Out In The New China,” from the New York Times Magazine].  Day got very long during second leg.

Late take-off again for Hong Kong.  Five-hour flight was unexpected.  Lady next to me wouldn’t shut up.  Managed to get some sleep.  Including time/date change, flight was 36 hours (left noon, Friday, 19 Dec.; landed midnight, Sat., 20 Dec.)  Actually, flying time was ca. 20 hours plus an hour or so each at Anchorage and Tokyo. [Anchorage was a lay-over; Tokyo was a plane-change.]

Met my roommate, Noel Cooperberg – MBA student at the University of Michigan.  OK.  Baggage took forever to get to the room.  Was nearly 3 a.m. before we got to bed.  Had to be up at 7 a.m.  Hotel fine; new “motel modern” high-rise.  Our room has view of Victoria Peak [highest hill on Hong Kong Island at 1,811 feet above sea level].

[I didn’t record the name of the hotel in which we stayed in Hong Kong, but notes I saved suggest that it was the Hotel Furama Inter-Continental in the Central District of the city.  It was a 33-story hotel that was only built in 1973, managed in 1980 by Inter-Continental Hotels Ltd.  It was closed and demolished in 2001.]

Tomorrow – Hong Kong.

HONG KONG

Hong Kong – Sunday, 21 December

Briefing at 9 a.m. – nothing new from literature and book.  (Some people are really stupid; they just don’t listen!)   Signed up for evening tour of island and dinner at Victoria Peak.  Will look around Kowloon shopping area this a.m.

[I think I should make a comment on that stupid-people-who-don’t-listen crack now, and then do a brief run-down on Hong Kong as it was in 1980.

[Our tour group was made up largely of middle-aged folks, mostly couples, from Long Island.  (I was about to turn 34 on Christmas Day and Noel was in his early 20’s or so.  There was at least one couple from Brooklyn who were in their late 30’s and early 40’s, but the rest were mostly older.)  They seemed to be mostly interested in buying stuff: rugs, porcelains, antiques, carved jade or ivory, tchotchkes, souvenirs.

[I didn’t learn this about my traveling companions immediately—it took a few days—but signs began to show right away that might have been clues if I’d been paying attention.  My remark above, I think, was about the food we were going to be eating once we crossed the frontier into the People’s Republic.

[IPTIC’s mimeographed guidelines, which I mentioned earlier, told us, “Breakfast will be Western style; lunch and dinner are Chinese . . . .”  Despite this explicit note—which we all received before we left the States—many of my fellow travelers complained bitterly about all the Chinese food they’d be getting!  (We actually hadn’t gotten any yet, by the way, much to my disappointment.)

[I was delighted . . . when it finally started in Guangzhou . . . but my companions went off in Hong Kong in search of the nearest McDonald’s.  Horrors!  When I found out, after a few stops along our itinerary, that if we arrived at a hotel in the afternoon or early evening, we could request Chinese breakfast the next morning instead of the Western breakfast that was the default—I (and a few others in the group) jumped at the offer.

[Now, about Hong Kong in the ’80s and before (in brief). 

[First of all, Hong Kong was British.  I don’t mean just because the United Kingdom owned the city—well, leased it . . . for 99 years—but it had the veneer of British culture (over its native Chinese/Cantonese one).  Almost everyone with whom a visitor came into contact spoke English, and did so with a British accent.  The hotels all served high tea in the afternoon, and the deluxe hostelries, such as the Peninsula Hotel, used Rolls Royces for their courtesy cars.

[Hong Kong had its own currency, the Hong Kong dollar (HK$), issued by the Government of Hong Kong.  The exchange-rate with the U.S. dollar in 1980 was about HK$5 to US$1; most stores accepted foreign money—dollars, francs, pounds, marks, and so on—at various rates of exchange, and American Express traveler’s checks and credit cards were generally accepted, too.  (Visas and MasterCards were not yet ubiquitously accepted abroad in 1980 as they are today, but Amex and, I think, Diners Club were.)

[Hong Kong became a Crown Colony in 1841.  At the time, the colony consisted only of Hong Kong Island; in 1860, the colony expanded to include Kowloon Peninsula, north of Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbour, and in 1898, it added the New Territories, an area consisting of 368 square miles of the mainland north of Kowloon Peninsula.  The 1898 agreement was the one at which the 99-year lease began.

[By 1980, the population of the colony was about 5 million inhabitants, of whom about 98% were Chinese.  Residents of the British colony held British National Overseas Passports and could live and work in the U.K. and apply for permanent residence status and British citizenship.

[Hong Kong in the ’80s was known for its wealth, as well as its high cost of living, and it was a popular tourist destination for its lifestyle and the shopping.  Goods, especially luxury goods such as jewelry, watches and cameras, antiques, art, and fashion, were on sale all over downtown Hong Kong, which was like a huge open-air, high-end mall.  (My family used to call Hong Kong “the World’s PX.”)  When the People’s Republic first opened up to foreign tourism, Hong Kong was the designated gateway to the mainland.

[In 1997, the U.K.’s 99-year lease on the territory expired, and Hong Kong was returned to China—which, in the interim, had, of course, become the communist-run People’s Republic of China.  All the former citizens of the British Dependent Territory of Hong Kong involuntarily became citizens of the PRC and subject to its laws and authority.]

One of our [IPTIC] guides, Patsy Cheung (Pepsi Cola [a nickname she supplied]), took us by subway to Waterloo Road in Kowloon where the Chinese Emporium is.  Very clean, fast, and efficient subway, and not expensive [HK$3, ca. 60¢US in 1980/$1.99 today], either.  [The Mass Transit Railway, or MTR, went into operation in 1979.]

Looked around Chinese Emporium – said to be better quality handicrafts here than in PRC.  [I don’t recall the store now, but according to the Hong Kong tourist map I have from this trip, it was probably the Chung Kiu Chinese Products Emporium on Nathan Road near the corner of Waterloo Road.  A branch of a mainland-owned department store, it carried a wide selection of Chinese products of good quality; it went out of business in 1997.] 

Bought white silk scarf with blue “Lucky” embroidered [in Chinese] and interesting table screen – my souvenir of China.  [I still have the scarf, a little grayed with age and rumpled from use.  I used to have a navy-blue overcoat with which I liked to wear that white scarf—very dashing!—and it lived in the coat’s sleeve.]

Some nice things (Chinese jackets and robes, cloisonné, antiques) and some cheap-looking things (cinnabar, furniture, some ivory carvings).

[Cloisonné is a decorative technique for metalwork in which colored enamel is baked between raised thin bands of the metal.  (In antique cloisonné pieces, the colored inlays were cut glass or even gems.)   

[Cinnabar is the common term for a distinctive Chinese form of carved lacquerware in which the lacquer has been colored with cinnabar, an ore of mercury which is a deep red mineral.  It’s used to make a variety of decorative and practical items such as boxes, plates, trays, screens, and furniture.  Fine pieces, especially antiques—the practice goes back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and most of the extant pieces are from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties—are very expensive.]

Took subway to Nathan Street [sic – Road] area [still in Kowloon] where main shopping is.  Wandered a bit and bought a pocket calculator to figure currency conversions.  Had lunch at Peninsula Hotel (with Cooperbergs [my roommate and his parents]).  Very “colonial” old hotel – boys in white uniforms (including pillbox hat) at doors – Rolls Royce parked out front and very grand.

[One of the things my parents suggested I do when I was in Hong Kong was to have tea at the Peninsula Hotel, which opened in Kowloon in 1928.  I didn’t manage to do that exactly, but this was my substitute.

[Combining colonial elegance and modern elements, the Peninsula has maintained its Baroque style architecture since its opening.  The Rolls was one of a fleet (Silver Shadows [1965-80], I believe), all painted “Peninsula green.”  Surprisingly, the hotel is not only still in operation under the communist regime, but continues to be a Western-type, colonial-style luxury hotel.]

Took Star Ferry back to Hong Kong.  Carols being sung at City Hall.  Went back to hotel to freshen up and met tour of island.

[The Star Ferry runs between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon across the harbor from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.  The fare was 30¢HK for 1st class (upper deck) and 20¢HK for 2nd (lower deck).  (That’s all of 6¢US and 4¢US, respectively.  The Staten Island Ferry, which operates 24/7, is free now, but it used to cost the same as the New York City bus and subway—$1.50 when it went fare-free, the equivalent of HK$7.50 in 1980.)]

So far, don’t really feel I’m in China – Hong Kong [is] so Western, except for [the] faces, could be Berlin or Athens!  [Well, that was inaccurate.  I was stationed in Berlin in the army in the early ’70s (see “Berlin Memoir,” 16 and 31 December 2016 and 20 January, 9 and 19 February, 11 and 29 March, and 13 April 2017) and I visited Athens in 1973—and neither city was anywhere near as modern in its appearance then as was Hong Kong in 1980.  I’d describe this city’s architectural style as aggressively modern.]

Bus tour starts with Aberdeen [an area on southwest Hong Kong Island famous for floating village and floating seafood restaurants in Aberdeen Harbour].  Now I see some of old China in Hong Kong.  Old tenements climbing the hillside, real native shops and markets.  Very different from Kowloon of this morning.

Aberdeen is first real “exotic” encounter.  Somewhat like Turkolimano near Athens [smallest of the three ports of Piraeus and used by smaller yachts and small fishing boats, known for its seafood restaurants and bars], but teeming with people and fish.  Sampans [flat-bottomed Chinese wooden boat, often used for fishing] crowd the harbor – took a ride around the harbor – past fishing junks [type of Chinese sailing ship with distinctive battened sails] and floating restaurants.  “Floating people” with whole families, including dogs, living on the boats.  Getting overcrowded and city is trying to force them all onto land.

On to Deep Water Bay ([off southern shore of Hong Kong Island] where [1955’s] Love Is a Many Splendored Thing [starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones] was filmed) and Repulse Bay ([next to Deep Water Bay to its east] named for World War II destroyer sunk there).  Some very wealthy homes perched along the bay!  [Deep Water Bay is reputed to be the richest neighborhood in the world.]

[The origin of Repulse Bay’s English name is obscure—and probably apocryphal.  No account of the name’s origin rests on any documentary evidence that has so far been found. 

[The story that it was named after the British warship HMS Repulse which was stationed at the bay is undocumented: no ship named Repulse was ever docked there according to Admiralty records.  Another account is that in 1841, the bay was a haven for pirates who were “repulsed” by the British Royal Navy.  No such action is recorded in the naval logs of the period.]

Up to Victoria Peak – wonderful view of Hong Kong by night.  The meal was good [we had dinner at one of the several restaurants near the summit – but Western.  I guess we won’t get Chinese food ’til tomorrow on the way to Canton [Guangzhou].

[My plaint about a Western meal on the Peak comes from the long wait I had for my first taste of Chinese cuisine, even after we arrived in Hong Kong.  I didn’t note at which restaurant we ate that night, but I think it was the Old Peak Café (renamed the Peak Lookout Restaurant in 2001) which served so-called international cuisine—a fancy name for Western food—much to my disappointment.

[As it turned out, the meal we got en route to Guangzhou didn’t satisfy my craving . . . as you’ll hear shortly.]

Just stepped out for a walk around Hong Kong Centre ([the city’s main business district] near the hotel) where the Christmas lights have just gone on.  (They seem to wait ’til the last weekend to put them on.)  Everybody’s out with their cameras and tripods.

Tomorrow starts very early (5:00 a.m.) and looks to be very long.

[This is the first of five installments of my transcription-with-commentary of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980.”  I’ll be posting the rest of the journal at three-day intervals through Wednesday, 5 January 2022; I hope you’ll return for each installment.

[The next segment of the journal will appear on Monday, 27 December, covering my entry into the People’s Republic and my visits to Canton (now called Guangzhou) and Shanghai.]