Two old photos and a piece of reminiscence

 

During this stay-at-home period, I have made some plans to do things that I should have done but never did. One of the plans is to put the two boxes of old photos in order. I came to two old photos that caught my fancy, one was a photo of me in our home in Beijing and the other one  is of my brother, Jeffrey (who married our classmate, Gerrie Kwan, 関明德), taken in a Studio in Beijing.

 In the fall of 1947, escaping the turmoils of the Civic war in China between the Kuomintang and Communist party, our family moved  from Beijing to Shanghai. 

I was totally stunned the minute I walked into our place in Shanghai. It was a  three story town house in the French Concession, fenced by black iron rails with a small iron front door. There were two stair ways inside the home, one in the living room, the other in the back leading to a small backyard opened to an alley. The interior   decoration and furnishings by the previous owner, an European, were mostly in grey, white and brown.  It was so foreign to a little girl who just came from a three courtyard house of huge vermillion front gate guarded by two stone lions, and a nice and colorful backyard garden.

 

We all felt a little lost in the new environment. But my bother was very excited about the new place. It was within walking distance to the famous theater, Lan Sing. He soon found new friends there and fell in love of acting. The group of artists encouraged my brother to join them because of his passion and good looks. But the idea Immediately killed by my parents.

 My mother always wanted to make changes about the place in Shanghai.  But she never got to change anything. A few months later, we moved away from Shanghai to Taipei. Soon the communist took over China mainland, and everything was changed. That was the year of 1949.

 

 

    Vivian   Carolyn   劉西珍  王華燕    関明德  Jeffrey Chao  趙蘭潤  (9/15/2015) -LA

Amy Kiang (趙蘭潤)2020/5/1