Retrospective from 2024
I said I’d wanted to get back to China as often as I could. When an opportunity came up to attend the IAS workshop in Beijing, I was interested. When I approached Provost McNew, she stated she didn’t 
realize my desire, and had named my friend Mike Seeborg as the faculty member whose way would be paid. I said if I could get nominated, I’d pay part of my own way and seek additional grant funding, and that’s how I got to travel to China with Mike, Minor and Ellen Myers.
Minor was always a treat, whimsical if sometimes unfocused, with myriad interests that were always semi pursued. He was a sometimes collector of (fill in the missing blanks) and one of those interests was philatelic. When I purchased a passport of a British soldier who went from China back to England, with the appropriate stamps, I was so excited I had to show it to him. “That’s wonderful, Fred,” he exclaimed, looking over his glasses. “I think I have one just like it.” I never tried to trump him again.
The 1995 trip to Beijing started with a Minor Myers treat: a chauffeured limousine to O’Hare. Good start. I remember Minor pursued Liulichang with the enthusiasm of Carolyn in a chocolate shop, gushing over the 
antique “treasures” he had found, while his long suffering wife rolled her eyes. Ellen freaked out when we were served scorpions, but then, she thought Tokyo–where you can literally almost eat on the streets–was dirty.
When the conference was over, I talked Mike into a train ride to Qingdao, which looked fascinating. We were staying in the “guest house” which, to my great joy, turned out to be the former residence of the German Governor General, who had surrendered it to the Japanese after a siege in 1914. A sign on one of the rooms indicated Chairman Mao spent a month there, and I hoped in the future, Mike and I would get the same recognition. What I remember best was being introduced to a Lada, a Soviet bloc car we chartered for touring, and having to push it uphill. Mike, more familiar than I with Eastern Europe, was not surprised. Qingdao was another place that would draw me back several times, for its salubrious seaside, and its still extant German efforts to make it resemble someplace in Germany.