I’d come across a twee card in London that I then bought and sent off to 胡老大 Hú lăo dà, my good friend in Taiwan.
The front of the card had a Victorian setting: a little girl in floral smocks and pigtails, wearing a mop cap, sitting on a high stool with her back to the reader, writing at a Queen Anne bureau with a large quill. At the foot of the high stool is a kitten playing with a ball of wool that had become a bit unravelled.
Hú lăo dà was at the time (1978) doing part of his national service on the island of 金门 Jīnmén ("gold gate”, also rendered as Quemoy / Kinmen), Taiwan’s (/ Republic of China’s) front-line military base just off the coast of Fujian province, S.E. China. Any foreign post to him would have to go first to Taipei’s GPO before being re-routed to Jīnmén, 116 miles (187 km) from Taiwan across Taiwan Strait. It took five to seven days for post to get from London to Taipei, so to Jīnmén it’d be another three days.
The very day after I sent off my Victorian girl card to Hú lăo dà, I received in the post in London a bookmark from him, sent from Jīnmén, with exactly the same Victorian picture.
He could not possibly have received my card already and then spotted its replica in the shops, which would then prompt him to buy it for me.
Besides, the Victorian scene would be an alien concept to Chinese card producers at the time, and therefore not likely to be a common find even in Taipei, never mind in Jīnmén, an outback military outpost of all places.
And even if it was available in Jīnmén, by some strange odds, why did Hú lăo dà pick out that bookmark of all items to send to me?? Very spooky indeed.
(London / Taiwan, 1978)
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