East is West

China Bound and on to the U.S.S.R.

April 1977
Travels with John Delp

Departing for the People's Republic of China with one of the first tourist visas issued to an American traveling independently.

Beijing, the Great Wall of China, the Ming Tombs, Manchuria – names that make the heart skip a beat, especially when you realize they are your destination.

In 1961, I left the farmlands of Illinois to “Go West, Young Man, Go West.” The world being round, I found myself in the Far East - Japan - and settled there. Further west lay China, that great, mysterious country with its vast population and vast landscapes. For most people, it’s also a vast blank in their knowledge. For years I skirted her borders, going to South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand, but always feeling a strange pull toward that great unknown, China.

Since the revolution in 1949, it had been almost impossible for an individual American to obtain a visa to visit China. Since I was running a travel agency in Japan, in 1977, I knew that, but I also knew that there must be some way to pull it off. Not only that, but why settle for the usual route? Why not include Manchuria? After all, the area had been a Japanese stronghold in the late 1920’s, leading to Japan’s large-scale embroilment in China. My desired route would take me to Harbin and then through Inner Mongolia and directly across the frontier from China to the U.S.S. R.

Sure enough, my persistence eventually paid off, and in April 1977, I found myself aboard a China Airlines (CAAC) flight, waving goodbye to my family as the plane turned away from the terminal building of Osaka International Airport, bound for Shanghai and Peking (now called Beijing). Behind that simple wave lay nearly three months of waiting, first for my Soviet visa, as I intended to continue into what was then the Soviet Union, and later for approval from the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo. My first experience of the People’s Republic of China came on board, as I noticed that the stewardess and steward were dressed identically in what was then the national uniform for all Chinese - basic blue jacket and pants. The stewardesses, like most Chinese girls their age, wore their hair in pigtails. I also observed that Socialist principles seemed to require that first class and economy receive the same service, satisfactory but plain and simple.

We landed in Shanghai, where all but twelve passengers disembarked; then it was on to Beijing. A chat with some of the other first-class passengers revealed that nearly all were en route to Hanoi. I was braced for trouble once we landed, but to my surprise, the passport check took only a minute or so, and customs another minute. There were no armed guards, no security forces, no lineup for luggage. A young man asked my nationality, then said, “You must be Mr. Delp. We’re expecting you. Where would you like to stay?”

The Beijing Hotel was fully booked due to early arrivals for the May Day festivities, so my fellow passengers and I agreed to stay at the Hsin Chiao. Two Japanese-built taxis were waiting for us. I shared a ride with a Danish civil engineer who had lived in Beijing for a couple of years and had spent a year in Pyongyang, North Korea, so he proved a valuable source of information.

The road from the airport was a wide boulevard, tree-lined on both sides. Even though it was about 10:00 p.m., there were still crowds of people out walking or riding bicycles, but very few cars. It wasn’t until we approached Beijing that we saw any apartments. We also saw roadside huts built the previous winter as temporary housing after the Taang Shan earthquake (1977). We passed the pleasant embassy area with its wide, tree-lined streets, sidewalks, and street lamps; it reminded me of an upscale American suburb.

The hotel check-in procedure was very simple: no keys. Instead, each floor had a desk in front of the elevator bank, with a steward to take care of you and your key, which hung on a hook next to his desk. We were informed that although the dining room closed at 10:00 p.m., they would be pleased to serve us dinner, even though it was now nearly 11:00. I asked for an 8:30am wake-up call and fell into bed after midnight.

However, by 5:30am I was wide awake and so, apparently, was all Beijing. The major intersection outside was already alive with people, bicycles, horse-drawn carts, and buses, but mostly bicycles. The buses worked their way through the crowds with a noisy blare of horns. I decided to go for a walk, camera in hand. My first impression turned out to be correct – Beijing really was a city of tree-lined streets. People, more people, and innumerable bicycles crowded the streets. Everyone was headed somewhere, no sidewalk loafers in sight. I spotted children on their way to school, carrying their own folding chairs or stools. One young girl was reading Mao’s Thoughts, held open in one hand, her chair in the other, as she walked along.

After breakfast – toast, juice, an omelet and coffee, all for U.S.80 cents - I took a taxi to the China International Travel Service (CITS) office to pick up my train ticket to Irkutsk, across the border in Siberia. As advised, I asked the driver to wait for me. The lady in the empty booking office checked her cards and, yes, they had received my telegram. For a total cost of $45, I accepted the deluxe 2-berth accommodation for the three–day, three-night trip. The lady, Mrs. Fan, took my passport to check the visa and turned pale. I waited nervously while she consulted one of the staff, and then left holding my passport. A few moments later she was back with an interpreter, the same man who had met me at Beijing Airport.

“ Mr. Delp,” he said, there is a problem with your visa. It’s valid for three days, but you will not cross the border into Russia until the fourth day.”

I insisted that I wanted to go on to Siberia, as planned. As one of the first Americans ever to visit China as a tourist, I had no idea if this visa problem was serious. They urged me to stay and enjoy May Day in Beijing, but I kept insisting on my original itinerary. After further consultation, they finally agreed to take my passport to the authorities and ask for an extension. Since the train was leaving that very evening, there was no time to lose.

While they negotiated my visa extension, I decided to skip lunch and go to see the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. Mrs. Fan wrote a note to the driver in Chinese, and I was on my way.

I was trying to do in five hours what most people did in a day. Little did I know that the driver would decide not to cut down the sightseeing time, but to increase his driving speed! He was determined to make it possible for me to see everything. We pushed every bicycle, horse-drawn cart, and even a military truck aside as we sped toward the Great Wall.

What a sight! Not one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but surely the Wonder of the World. The Great Wall of China is 3,974 kilometers (2,484 miles) long and 6.6 meters (22 feet) high, and every stone was put in place by hand. I couldn’t believe I was actually walking on it, alone.

An hour later, we raced to the Thirteen Ming Tombs, which lie halfway between the Great Wall and Beijing, in a natural amphitheater formed by mountains. The approach is through a gateway and along a road lined with splendidly carved stone figures of humans and animals, each about 2.4 meters (8 feet) tall. I visited the most grandiose of the tombs, that of Emperor Yong Le, who ruled from 1403 to 1425, before Columbus had even reached America.

Amazingly, my driver had me back at the CITS office by 2:00 p.m., but they asked me to come again at 4:00. I began to worry that I might be stuck in Beijing for May Day after all. I asked the driver to take me to Tiananmen Square, which not only lies in the heart of the city, but is also considered to be the heart of China. It is here that the country’s leaders and masses come together for national celebrations. The Square itself is over 40 hectares (100 acres) in area. It was a sea of bicycles! The whole city seemed to be constantly on the move.

On the north end of the square a portion of the wall of the old Imperial City still stands, including the massive Tiananmen Gate (the Gate of Heavenly Peace). This stone gate, with a huge portrait of Mao hung high over it, was used by the emperor when he went to offer sacrifices at the Temple of Heaven or when he left the capital on a journey. Facing the Square were the Great Hall of the People, the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution.

A few minutes’ drive away was the Friendship Store, a four-storied department store open to any foreign resident or visitor to Beijing. Ordinary Chinese with access to hard currency were also permitted to enter. It housed everything from a vegetable and meat market to a carpet corner, where even a small throw rug was selling for U.S. $250 – the price rose to to many thousands of dollars for a 3-by-4 meter (9-by-12 foot) room-sized carpet. I was told that the prices here were the same as those charged in local shops throughout China. The only difference was that the sales clerks could understand some English and the products had all been gathered under one roof to make shopping more convenient. This contrasted with the Russian-style hard-currency stores of that era, where many things displayed were not available to the average Soviet citizen. I settled for a couple of men’s cashmere cardigans at $18 each.

I returned to the CITS travel office at 4:30 p.m., just as the messenger walked in with my passport. The service charge and visa extension cost only U.S. 50 cents!

Since the hotel restaurant was closed until 6:00 p.m., the travel service recommended a restaurant nearby. The taxi pulled up in front of a one-story stone building. Although I couldn’t read Chinese, some of the characters were the same as those used in Japan, so I could at least make out from the door plaque that this was indeed a restaurant. I passed through the doorway into a rather junky-looking courtyard and followed a couple to a large room packed with people.

Every table was full. A waitress looked my way. I held up one finger to indicate I was alone, which at this point was very obvious, as all eyes turned my way. At a time when the entire population of China - over 800 million of them - dressed in dark trousers and jackets, I alone was wearing a white pullover sweater. The waitress placed me at a table with three middle-aged men enjoying a pitcher of beer and some kind of salad-looking dish. Their expressions were anything but warm.

I spotted a corner where draft beer in pitchers was available on what seemed to be a self-service basis. I chose a medium-sized pitcher and a salad of freshly sliced tomato, cucumber, and cold meat, and returned to the table.

I felt greatly relieved; I had solved the problem of ordering, but was this all I was going to get for dinner? Just then the waitress came. Oblivious to my being a foreigner, she presented me with the menu in Chinese. I gave it some concentrated study, then a little more concentration, and came to the conclusion that I had it right side up, but I didn’t recognize even one Chinese character. Finally, I decided that the safest option was to point to two dishes in the medium-price range, and just pray that my gamble was not so exotic I wouldn’t be able to eat it. As I picked up my chopsticks and began to eat the salad, I realized the whole restaurant was breathing a collective sigh of relief. The foreigner could use chopsticks!

At the next table were eleven young fellows celebrating something. Perhaps it had to do with the May Day holiday, the one I was going to miss. From time to time, they give me a kind look and a smile. Without a doubt they were having a discussion about what a foreigner might order, little knowing that the foreigner himself was wondering the same thing. About then, the waitress approached with a dish the size of a turkey platter, on which was a huge deep-fried carp! I gasped - my God, what have I done but just as she approached my table, she turned and placed the platter in front of the boys having the party. Moments later my order arrived: a dish of sautéed beef in a sweet sauce and something not quite identifiable, perhaps a vegetable with sliced mushrooms, also in a sweet sauce. To my relief, both were quite edible. The three fellows at my table even smiled at me, and my dining adventure ended on a happy note.

A few hours later, I arrived at the train station. Expecting great confusion and long lines for the passport check, I was an hour early, but found the waiting room rather quiet. There was merely a desk where one left one’s passport and picked it up again some fifteen minutes later. Thirty minutes prior to departure the train came into the station and I bade farewell to Beijing.

The Beijing-Moscow International Train departed Beijing every Saturday evening, bound for Moscow, and comprised ten Russian coaches and one Chinese diner. The deluxe compartments were more like staterooms. The lower berth, which served as a couch during the day, faced a comfortable settee, with a white linen-covered table in between. The upper berth folded neatly against the wall, and there were lace curtains on the window. Between every pair of deluxe compartments was a washroom with a wide basin, mirror and shower. The corridor was carpeted in dark green with a brightly striped runner that was changed daily. A samovar (hot water heater) steamed away at one end of each car, and there were toilet facilities at either end. Along the corridor were hinged tables that popped up for use and pull-down seats between the windows.

I had barely settled into my compartment when the conductor appeared and began chatting away in Russian, on and on and on until I finally realized I was supposed to ask for anything I needed. Did I want a cup of tea? Sure, why not. Soon he was back with the tea in hand. A Russian cup of tea is actually a glass of tea, as it’s served in a glass set into a silver holder with a handle. The train pulled out of Beijing right on time. Exhausted, I was asleep within minutes.

At 5:45 a.m. we pulled into Shenyang Station, paused just long enough for the conductor to serve my morning tea, and then we were underway again. As I watched the passing countryside, I noticed that everyone along the way stopped and looked up. The children even seemed to be waiting along the tracks to wave at us. Since the Peking – Moscow International Train operated only once a week, I assumed they must watch for it every week.

The countryside reminded me of the American Midwest as it had probably looked in the nineteenth century: horses and oxen in the fields, and people tilling the soil by hand. However, nowhere was the soil as black and fertile-looking as where I had grown up in northern Illinois. If anything, as we moved northward toward Harbin, the fields looked less and less fertile, and the climate became quite cool. The trees were just beginning to come into leaf, but the cherry trees were in pink-and-white bloom, just like in Japan. I wondered if they were native trees, or if the Japanese had brought them to China when they occupied this region in the 1930’s.

After my Beijing restaurant experience, I was nervous about going to the dining car for lunch, but I needn’t have worried: the menu was in Chinese, Russian, and English - all thirty-eight pages. Everything I ordered was delicious. And I washed it down with a large bottle of beer. Total cost of lunch and beer was only U.S.$2. “Deluxe” travel was certainly cheaper than back home!

By the time we reached Harbin in the early afternoon, it was turning cold with light rain. In Harbin, we switched from electric to steam power, and from there on we stopped every hour or so to take on water. The rail yard, a major switching point, was very exciting, with a dozen or more huge locomotives blasting steam, whistles screaming.

While waiting for our locomotive change, I took out my camera to take a picture of the sign on the side of my coach, “Peking-Moscow.” Just as I was about to snap the shutter, the conductor yelled, “Stop!” I froze, remembering all the horror stories I’d heard about Americans with cameras being arrested as “spies” and thrown into prison. But no, the conductor rushed into the car and ran out with a rag to wipe off the plaque, so it would be nice and clean for the photo!

The day grew warmer as the train chugged northward, but evidently this was one of the first warm days of spring as none of the trees had yet started to bud. The countryside looked a lot like my impression of North Dakota, with nothing visible to the horizon but wasteland. Not even a farm boy like myself could figure out what the farmers here were trying to grow. After a while, I saw oil rigs in the distance, then more pumping stations as we pulled briefly into Da Quin. We were in oil country.

After a good night’s sleep, I woke to find us chugging along the fringes of the great Gobi Desert. We were just 85 kilometers (50 miles) from Mongolia, passing through an autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China known as Inner Mongolia. We arrived at Manchouli (Manchuria) Station right on schedule, and officials boarded the train to clear us politely through Chinese customs and immigration. Customs inspection was painless, merely a question or two. The immigration official collected our passports and cleared them while we went to the station to change our money and do a bit of last-minute shopping in the station store. Chinese currency was non-convertible into Russian rubles, so we needed to change to U.S. dollars on the Chinese side of the border and then, a few minutes later in the Soviet Union, convert the dollars to rubles. It was quite cold outside and we were grateful for the large thermos bottles of complimentary hot tea in the waiting room.

The locomotive was changed again, this time to a “showpiece” locomotive with brightly-polished brass – evidently designed to show the Russians how great things were across the border. I felt a deep thrill as I realized that I was probably the first American since the Communist takeover in 1949 to cross the border here from Manchouli, China, to Zabaykalsk, U.S.S.R.

Despite the short distance of perhaps a mile, the crossing took twenty-five-minutes at a dead crawl, because neither side trusted the other. In Zabaykalsk the train was pulled onto a siding where they changed the wheel trucks from the narrow-gauge Chinese type to the wide-gauge Soviet ones. The cars were lifted by huge hydraulic arms, the wheel trucks changed, and then the cars were lowered again.

This was the Soviet Union. There was no doubt about it, for the warm, wide smiles of China had been replaced by dour looks and gruff orders to hand over passports and immigration forms for inspection. The Soviet customs inspectors not only searched under the sheets on our berths, but even under the sheets in the unoccupied compartments – using flashlights, even though it was broad daylight! As three inspectors sifted through my belongings, I got the same feeling I had had before in the U.S.S.R. – that what they were most interested in seeing was what new products we were bringing from overseas. They seemed amazed at the matte finish on my photos. One of them leafed through every page of my Desk Diary, though I doubted he could read a word of English. When I asked him if many Americans passed through the Manchurian route, a young female customs officer translated for the chief inspector: “Not many. In fact, you are the first American I have ever met!”

It was extremely cold outside as we hiked to the station to change our money again, this time from dollars to rubles. I commented to the customs girl about the frost on the ground. She agreed that it was indeed a chilly morning, but said the temperature frequently dropped much lower, to minus 40 degrees Celsius (that’s about where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet), and the wind never stopped blowing. She told me matter-of-factly that there wasn’t much vegetation and the nearest river was 40 kilometers (25 miles) away.

Many Russians now boarded the train, most bound for Moscow, nearly a week away. The conductor kept the samovar, a kind of hot water heater, going throughout the trip. I watched the scenery change from the arid desolation of the border region to the beginning of forested land or taiga. In the evening I had vodka to celebrate my arrival in the U.S.S.R. and the fact that, since passing Chita, we were now traveling on the tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The following day, I awoke to the beautiful mountain scenery of Siberia and we soon arrived in Ulan Ude. Though it was early May, it was extraordinarily cold! The undersides of our rail cars were covered with ice. The women of Ulan Ude appeared well dressed, in stylish winter coats and hats, but the men didn’t seem to care how they dressed. The many Asian faces at the station surprised me; we could have been in China or Japan. Then I realized: Of course, this was the Far East of the Soviet Union!

The day before, I had nearly been left behind at a station, so the conductor now watched me rather carefully. Everyone had had a good laugh as I sprinted along the platform and leapt onto the last car as it was speeding along. The departure time didn’t appear to be fixed, and there was never much advance warning: one blast of the whistle and immediately the train started moving. As a result, the movement of passengers on the platform tended to resemble a game of “musical chairs,” with everyone circling warily, ready to pounce at the first note of the whistle.

Passenger cars on the train were heated by a boiler system that used coal. At each station, a tractor pulling a few small wagons would come along and drop off enormous buckets of coal on the platform, near the door of each car. Then two female conductors had to haul the buckets up into the car and dump the contents into a storage bin under the boiler. They really struggled to lift those heavy buckets at each station, so occasionally I helped them hoist the buckets into the car, much to the amusement of the Russians on the platform.

Just past Ulan Ude, we began to follow the shore of Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake. Though it was the third of May, the lake was still frozen to a depth of over 1.5 meters (4.5 feet), and trucks could be driven right onto the lake. In fact, before the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the railway line ran straight across the lake. The two portions were linked by a passenger steamer in summer, but in winter the tracks were laid across the ice!

At major stations, the train would stop and passengers would pile off to buy their lunches at stalls selling boiled potatoes, roast beef, bread, and an assortment of Russian snacks. The train’s dining car had been fully stocked with fruit, soft drinks and, naturally, vodka when we left Zabaykalsk on the border. However, as the train stopped at various stations, the dining car became a kind of supermarket on wheels for the local community. People formed long lines at the door of the diner to buy liquor and fruit from the waiters or waitresses. It didn’t take long for our supplies to be depleted. Since everyone on board knew what was going to happen, as soon as the train pulled out of Zabaykalsk, there was a run on the dining car; people could be seen lugging armloads of supplies down the corridors to their compartments.

As on the Chinese side of the border, the dining car menu was pages long. But one quickly learned that it was a waste of time to take it seriously, since in reality there was usually a choice of two, take it or leave it!

By mid-afternoon, we’d arrived at Irkutsk by mid-afternoon where the Intourist guide was waiting for me. I had given many of the children on the train little gifts such as candies, pencils, balloons, and souvenirs, and many of my new friends came to the windows to wave goodbye. They still had five more days of travel before they reached Moscow.

My guide was a charming young woman who spoke flawless English. Her first question was: “How was China?” She was anxious to hear the details, especially what I had seen of Harbin, which was her birthplace. Her father had been a Soviet scientist, a Jew, and had worked in Harbin. Later, when she was a young girl, they had moved to Odessa and ultimately to Irkutsk. She told me that today was a very nostalgic day for her. When she was young, her father had traveled frequently to other parts of the Soviet Union. Nearly every Wednesday she and her mother had gone to Irkutsk Station to meet the Peking-Moscow International Train to greet friends on behalf of her father, who was invariably out of town. With the cooling of relations between China and Russia and the death of her father, it had been years since she’d met the train. Meeting me at the station today brought back many memories for her.

My hotel, the Angara, was named after the Angara River that flows out of Lake Baikal and through the city of Irkutsk. While 336 rivers flow into Lake Baikal, only the Angara flows out. The hotel was typical of what one found at that time in the Soviet Union: a new showcase of prefabricated concrete on the verge of collapse. The Soviets seemed to build their hotels old. I decided to take a shower prior to my afternoon tour, only to discover that the water was freezing cold. I headed for the lobby to complain and discovered there was no need for a floor indicator above the elevator door. You just watched, through doors that never closed all the way, the moving cables in the elevator shaft until you saw the approach of the car. Once I reached the front desk, I was informed that there would be hot water “later today.” I quickly learned that there was never hot water until “later today.”

I went for a stroll around the city, which is located at the base of Lake Baikal. It was bitterly cold, about 1 degree C (35 degrees F), and I was very glad I’d brought a heavy sweater and leather jacket. Irkutsk, with a population at that time of about 500,000, was the educational and cultural center of Siberia. The city’s history seemed to be rich in Christian heritage, and in the center of the city they were restoring a brick Catholic Church built by Poles who had been forcibly transported to Siberia years before. Again, I noticed many Asian faces on the streets, not tourists but Soviet citizens, reminding me of our proximity to Mongolia and China.

I was surprised at the well-dressed women and at the satisfied looks of the men, in sharp contrast to the dour faces one sees everywhere in Moscow. Even the houses in Irkutsk were cheerful, trimmed in gingerbread patterns of carved wood with brightly-colored shutters on the double-casement windows. Traditionally, only the shutters were painted in colors, while the rest of the house was left to the weather and eventually turned a dark brown. Between the double-casement windows were pots of red geraniums. I stopped again and again to admire the colorful displays, occasionally spotting a cat warming itself in the sunshine next to the geraniums.

I had dinner that night in the hotel dining room, where the service was quick, the food satisfactory, and the beer horrid – it tasted like soapy water. Music was pouring from the hotel nightclub - or “cabaret” as it was called.. Since the evening was young, I decided to go in, only to find myself barred by the doorman, who indicated that foreigners were not welcome. I complained at the front desk, but the clerk just shrugged and said, “Sorry, the English-speaking clerk is off for the evening.”

“ But you’ve just done a fine job of telling me that in English,” I said. ”How about telling the doorman that he has to let me in!”

“ Sorry, no speak English.”

Okay, I thought, I’ll take matters into my own hands. Back to the cabaret I went and, while the doorman was busy arguing with a group of young Russians, I slipped inside.

The place was packed and a band was playing loudly. It was easy to see the tables because in a Soviet nightclub they didn’t turn down the lights, they turned them up. Everywhere else, the city was rather dark at night: the corridors of the hotel were dark, the lobby was dark, the bank was dark, the post office was dark. But the nightclub was lit up like a movie set.

I couldn’t see any vacant seats, so I approached the waitresses, most of whom were sitting in a corner booth acting like it was the local Wednesday-night ladies’ club, and not their turn on duty. I inquired in English if there was some place I could sit for a while. Lots of giggles and a much shrugging of shoulders followed, and then they pointed to the door. Oh no, not that! I had just arrived. I worked my way across the room to another ladies’ club and inquired again. Another shrug of the shoulders. This time they didn’t even bother pointing at the door.

Finally, I spotted a table that seemed to be empty, and asked a couple nearby if it was okay for me sit there. More shoulder shrugging, so I parked myself to enjoy the show. A waiter appeared immediately to take my order. They only had bottles: champagne, vodka, or cognac. I chose the champagne, suspecting (correctly) that it would arrive lukewarm.

The music stopped, the band took a break, and four women appeared at my table, which was evidently their table. They looked to be over forty alone, and were obviously working the room. They were local Siberians, initially apprehensive of their new tablemate, but they quickly relaxed. They pretended to ignore me, all the while apparently talking about me, smiling and curious.

They split a bottle of vodka. Then another quickly appeared, courtesy of a not-so-secret admirer, who kept staring at them from across the hall. The band came back and four late-middle-aged men, obviously from the sticks (and when you are from the sticks in Siberia, that’s really the sticks), came to ask my companions for the next dance. Yes, there was capitalism in the Soviet Union, for not even Communism had been able to eliminate the world’s oldest profession.

The following morning I was up and out before 6:00 a.m. to take another walk around the city. I passed a milkman coming in from the farm with his precious can of milk perched in his horse-drawn cart. I hadn’t realized how cold it was until I noticed him bundled up in his coat and fur hat; then I pulled my own collar closer around my neck. It was a beautiful morning and I enjoyed the cheerful faces of the citizens. The heavy military look of Moscow was blessedly absent here.

Later that day, I made an excursion to Lake Baikal. We wended our way by car through a forest of pine trees, with a glimpse now and then of the great Angara River. The ice on the lake was just beginning to break up, and the view was spectacular: Great forces were pushing the ice toward the shore where it piled as high as a two-story house and then shattered into great towering spires that glittered deep blue in the sun.

That evening at the hotel, I spotted a white-haired lady dining alone and asked if I could join her. She turned out to be a delightful Australian grandmother heading to London via Japan and the Trans-Siberian Railway to visit her grandchildren. “I’ve been here for a month now,” she said. “My husband had a heart attack aboard the Tran-Siberian Express. He’s hospitalized here.”

Her husband kept asking her to bring him oranges, and then he’d complain when she showed up with lemons – the only citrus she could find, for which she’d had to stand hours in line! She seemed to be coping well, under the circumstances, but she missed the letters that her son in England had mailed. He would tell her about them in his weekly telephone calls, but the letters never arrived, thanks to Soviet censors.

Since I had only two more nights in the Soviet Union, I decided to make up a small survival kit for her, featuring a box of Kleenex and a roll of toilet paper. Soviet toilet paper was not exactly kind to the skin. In fact, it usually consisted of the newspaper Pravda cut into squares! She was thrilled with the gifts, and I left Irkutsk marveling once more at all the small luxuries we capitalists took for granted.

My morning call was at 2:30 a.m. for the once-a-week 4:00am flight to Khabarovsk. I had argued that surely there must be later flights, but Intourist had been adamant that this was only the only one. In fact, I was the only passenger to board in Irkutsk, and later learned that there were three midday flights – but foreigners were not allowed to take them.

At Khabarovsk, I followed the passengers off the plane and at long last the luggage arrived, but not mine. Forty minutes later, I went in search of someone who could speak English. Fortunately, a young man came running up to me, saying how worried he’d been, as he’d been waiting for me in the special area reserved for foreigners, where my bag had been delivered long ago! He had called Irkutsk to find that indeed I had been put aboard the flight, but it had never occurred to him that I would follow the other passengers to the standard baggage claim area.

I had paid for first-class accommodation at the hotel, but “first class” evidently had a different meaning in the USSR: the hot water from the tap looked like coffee; the bathroom windows were wall-to-wall and came down almost to the floor, but there were no curtains. I assumed this setup was to discourage guests from taking a bath in the daytime. After all, by having to take it at night, with the lights off, you wouldn’t notice the color of the water! There had obviously been a few plumbing problems, as someone had knocked a hole in the tiles under the tub to reach the pipes, leaving piles of plaster and concrete on the floor. The toilet seat had no lid, and the seat itself resembled a flattened Presto Log.

After surveying my dismal room, I decided to take a look around Khabarovsk, only to find that there was nothing to see. Although Khabarovsk was a major junction point for all rail and air traffic in the Soviet Far East, it was a drab city of prefabricated concrete buildings made more gloomy by the gray wintry sky. It was the 5th of May, but spring seemed to be far off. The only good thing about Khabarovsk was my guide, an interesting young woman who told me that – like the woman I’d met in Irkutsk - her father was a Jew born in Harbin, China, who later moved to Khabarovsk. I was beginning to sense the pioneer spirit among these people, many of whom were from families who’d come here to escape persecution in Eastern Europe and in the western part of the Soviet Union.

I left Khabarovsk later that day and, two hours later, found myself home again in Japan. Reflecting on the myriad experiences of the past ten days, I was grateful that I’d had the chance to see a part of the world that was still off-limits to most Americans. As I happily pushed my (working) elevator button and returned to my heated modern apartment with running water (clear, not brown) and an abundance of food in the pantry and refrigerator, I realized how fortunate I was and how glad I was to be done.