Category: Travel
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Road Show
On Monday, October 5, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (the organization where I work) will be staging its 9th annual CHINA Town Hall, a national day of programming that will take place in nearly 80 venues across the United States and beyond this year. I’ll be traveling to Manhattan, KS to speak at Kansas…
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The Hot Spots and Storied Plots of Laurel Hill Cemetery
“The Cemetery Gift Shop Is Open” wasn’t the first thing I expected to see as my mother, brother, and I approached the main office at Laurel Hill Cemetery last Saturday morning. A gift shop at a cemetery? But indeed, we walked into the room and found a small store selling books and postcards of historic…
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Up, Up, and Away: Yangshuo, 2005
Like many other things I did during my first trip to China, the hot-air balloon ride wasn’t my idea. I had gone on what was meant to be a two-week tour of Hong Kong and southern China with Elaine (not her real name), an American classmate of mine from Beijing. After several days in Hong…
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Nightscape at Longwood Gardens
I’ve written here before about how much I love suburban Philadelphia’s Longwood Gardens: the park is beautiful, it’s elegant, it’s timeless. My grandparents took my mother and her sisters there, just as my mother took my brother and me there when we were little, and while some elements changed in little ways over the decades,…
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Shanghai Snapshots
What did I do with ten days of vacation in Shanghai? Well, I spent a lot of that time recharging my batteries—drinking multiple cups of instant coffee and writing or reading in my cozy attic room at the Astor House, marking the passage of hours by the chiming of “The East Is Red” from the…
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Postcard from Hong Kong
United Airlines flight 117 begins at Newark Liberty International Airport, 10 miles from my home in Jersey City, and ends in Hong Kong, 8065 miles away. It’s the eighth-longest flight route in operation, and if you’re a restless flyer—and I am a terribly restless flyer—there’s nothing good about it, save the small cup of mango…
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Two Upcoming Events in SoCal
I will be back in California for a week at the end of this month—first to San Francisco for work, then to Irvine for … well, a working vacation? I originally intended my three days in Southern California to be pure vacation—visiting friends, going to the beach, eating my annual In-N-Out burger. But then I…
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Snapshots from Chicago
Chicago is a city I’d like to get to know better, but circumstances have only brought me there twice. The first time was last summer, when my mother and I rode the train across the country; we had a one-day stopover in Chicago. The second time was this past weekend, when the annual meeting of…
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Postcard from Washington, D.C.
I was in Washington, D.C. for work two weeks ago and snapped this photo of the Washington Monument while waiting in a security line. When I saw the shot appear on my phone, I suddenly remembered another photo I took of the Washington Monument, back in the summer of 1998. I spent a week in…
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58 Hours in Singapore
I wanted to do something special for my birthday earlier this month, so I decided to spend the weekend in Singapore—my first trip to the city-state. Have you read the New York Times features on “36 Hours in …,” where they outline a (usually extravagant) jam-packed weekend of activities? My excursion to Singapore wasn’t quite…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 