{"id":17852,"date":"2022-03-21T14:13:07","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T18:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/?p=17852"},"modified":"2024-08-27T16:57:58","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T20:57:58","slug":"xiao-lan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/2022\/xiao-lan\/","title":{"rendered":"Xiao Lan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\n
\n
\n
\n

\n Xiao Lan\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Shanghai, China \u2014 October 1997
\n\tMy first trip to China, I fell in love — with the country, the people, the architecture, the Great Wall, the street life, night markets, the Great Mosque in Xian, the Bund in Shanghai, but most of all with a little girl.
\n\tIt was at the end of our three-week tour of the Ancient Capitals of China. I was a tour manager for a New York educational tour company.
\n\tIt was Tuesday, so the Shanghai Museum was filled with hundreds of Chinese school children on class trips. I was listening to our lecturer in the Sculpture Room, when I heard a little voice. I turned around and saw the beautiful little face of a young girl dressed in bright colors. She was definitely speaking to me.
\n\tI had to know what she was trying to say and grabbed my Chinese guide to translate. She was trying out her English on me. The rest of her class hung back, giggling and watching this brave little girl talk to me.
\n\tI was charmed. I had our picture taken together before her class and my group moved on. Something made me run back and get her address from the teacher so I could send her the picture. I learned that Xiao Lan had come from Tibet to live with her grandparents in Shanghai.
\n \tSeveral months after I got home, I finally did send her a letter with the photos. I never heard from her, and although disappointed, I wasn\u2019t too surprised.
\n\tAlmost a year and a half later, four days before I was to leave for Shanghai on another China tour, I received a letter postmarked from Shanghai. I ripped open the envelope to find two pages of Chinese characters!! It was too late to run down to the local Chinese restaurant for a quick translation, so the next morning on the train, I scanned my fellow commuters and asked a few startled passengers if they spoke Chinese with no luck. Walking down Park Avenue to work, I stopped a young Asian woman and asked her the same question. Yes, she did speak Chinese and, very amused, she translated the letter right there on the sidewalk.
\n \tMy letter had taken almost a year to reach Xiao Lan, but she had known it would come and had looked for it everyday in her mailbox. I was grateful that I had actually sent it!
\n\tThen she told me her story. Her parents had divorced and left her and her younger brother with their grandparents in Shanghai. She never heard from them again. She had seen New York on TV, and gave me her address and phone number.
\n\tI was amazed at the timing of her letter and was determined to see her in Shanghai. I gathered a few little presents for her and went off to China. With my guide\u2019s help, I finally reached her. She immediately invited me to her home, an hour from Shanghai. We agreed, instead, to meet at the Shanghai Museum\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shanghai, China \u2014 October 1997 My first trip to China, I fell in love — with the country, the people, the architecture, the Great Wall, the street life, night markets, the Great Mosque in Xian, the Bund in Shanghai, but most of all with a little girl. It was at the end of our three-week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoir"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17866,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17852\/revisions\/17866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}