Memories

This year marks the 25th anniversary of our ‘big trip’ and tonight E got the box out that contains all the travel diaries, tickets, money etc. We kept all sorts of stuff. We keep talking about digitising it all somehow, perhaps writing it up and scanning the thousands of slides.

This photo is of a ‘student card’ I had while in China. Tickets often had two prices - Chinese and Foreigner, which was about eight times the price of a Chinese ticket. By having a student card you could get a Chinese ticket. It’s a fake of course. And everyone knew it. I can’t remember what it claims I’m studying. It could say anything. It probably says ‘this is fake’!

I imagine China has changed enormously in the last 25 years. It was the hardest country we travelled through, for a host of reasons. Just buying a train ticket could take half a day. Getting a room in a hotel could take even longer. It was exhausting. Nearly got ourselves arrested at one point. But we met some great people and saw some truly amazing things.