Time to Explore China

Given my childhood and my family history, it was inevitable that I would go to China someday. I’m just surprised that it took me so many years to get there. China has been part of my world for as long as I can remember. In the house where I grew up on Long Island, we had several pieces of Chinese art hanging on the walls of the house where I grew up. These were beautiful pieces of silk embroidery that had been given to my father when he lived in China in the late 1940s.

 

As a 21-year old civil engineering graduate from Georgia Tech, Seymour had gone into the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers in 1943, in the middle of World War 2. 

Assigned to the CBI (China-Burma-India) theater, he worked on building a new road through the Himalayas, in order to provide an overland supply route from India into southwestern China. This new road, called the Ledo (later renamed Stilwell) Road, replaced the Burma Road, which the Japanese had cut off in 1942. 

The Ledo Road crossed northern Myanmar.

WW2 US Army Ledo Road shoulder sleeve insignia patch

Once the war was over, he was sent to work with the Chinese Nationalist Army in China’s Yunnan province. Based in the city of Kunming, he instructed the Chinese military in the use of heavy construction equipment to build roads and air strips. (See Yunnan province in yellow on the map of China today.)

My father is in the middle of the front row.

WW2 Chinese Nationalist Army chest identification badge

Kunming is the capital of Yunnan province.

 

I recall my father speaking often of his experiences in China. It was clear that he admired the Chinese people and treasured the friendships he made with Chinese officers. In fact, the pieces of art work hanging on our walls were farewell gifts he’d received from members of the Chinese military when China’s civil war forced him to leave the country at the end of 1946. There's a message to him in Chinese from one of the generals. 

My father had a lifelong love of China that included a fondness for Chinese food. There were plenty of Cantonese restaurants in the New York area when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s. Nearly every Sunday evening, our family went out to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. Some of our favorite dishes were barbecued spare ribs, wonton soup, egg rolls, egg foo young, lo mein, shrimp with lobster sauce, fried rice, and subgum chicken chow mein. Thanks to my father, I learned to use chopsticks at a very early age. 

 

On my mother’s side of the family, I have a different kind of China connection. Around the time of the Russian Revolution, my Ashkenazi Jewish maternal grandmother fled from her home in Lithuania, which was then part of the Russian Empire. With World War 1 raging in Europe, she wasn’t able to sail across the Atlantic to reach the United States. Along with a few family members, she traveled by train across Siberia to the city of Harbin, in the extreme northeast of China. Harbin was in the area called Manchuria (green on the map of China today). There, they became part of the community established other Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. Eventually my grandmother was able to make her way to the U.S. by sailing across the Pacific. 

Harbin was a major city in the area of Manchuria.

I’ve recently wondered why I didn’t travel to China sooner. After all, since I started traveling back in my college years, I’d traveled to countless other countries in several continents. Part of the reason may be that until late 2017, when I took my first OAT trip, all of my overseas travel had been done independently. When I traveled either solo or with my husband, I would be in charge of making all the arrangements: arranging flights, choosing hotels and restaurants, familiarizing myself with maps, figuring out how to use public transportation, etc. Traveling to China must have crossed my mind but I was frankly intimidated by the thought of traveling independently in a vast country where the language was so unfamiliar. 

 

Fortunately, following the pandemic, Overseas Adventure Travel resumed their China trips and I immediately signed up for a 21-day adventure in the fall of 2026. Although the itinerary didn’t include Kunming or Harbin, I’d get to see Shanghai, Guilin, Chengdu, Xi’an, and Beijing. And I wouldn’t have to worry about my inability to read or speak Chinese. In any case, I did my usual pre-trip preparation, reading up on 5000-plus years of Chinese history. This allowed me to create a timeline for reference.   

And then, finally, I was ready. When the day of my departure arrived, I wasn't looking forward to the 24-hour journey (2 flights) to get from home to Shanghai but I was definitely looking forward to exploring China at last!