Preface

Hai Xin

Twenty-odd years ago, I lugged a suitcase and arrived alone in London from Beijing as a student. I had got precisely – and preciously, too – US$200 in my pocket: a crispy one-hundred-dollar note in its distinctive green and another one-hundred-dollar note, slightly wrinkled but nevertheless with its unmistakable green hue.

The pocket that held my money was not the usual jacket or trousers variety but a special one sewn by my mother on the inside of my T-shirt. These two US$100 notes were lent to me by a family friend, who used to work at the provincial tourism bureau. She had been to a trade exhibition in Frankfurt the previous year and saved up most of her allowance. Working in the tourism industry was one of the very few ways for an ordinary Chinese citizen to obtain foreign currencies at the time. As I reminisce now, having worked for years in the foreign-exchange business, two small details of the past come to a new light: my family friend in China went to Germany but got US dollars as an allowance; I flew to England from China with two US dollar bills close to my heart, quite literally. No one would be surprised by these two personal trivialities as these are but the