Shanghai, June 3rd, 1950

Well, Lee my dearest, here I am at last! More than ten weeks on the way. Reminds me of the last time Phil left me, and I was three months getting from England to Manila. We had only one night in Tientsin, leaving there on Saturday night at seven p.m., and arriving here at five a.m. on Monday morning. We were met at the station with hot thermoses of coffee, and sandwiches. There were four in our group, as we picked up a girl of twenty-seven coming up to marry a man in the Shell. Besides us on the train there were two men in the Hongkong Bank, and two other women off our ship, and the only first class car on the train was an American style pullman, so we were all in there. Our little group looked like Orientals travelling, with three large wicker baskets of food and drink, supplied to us by the Shell people in Tientsin. Also a cushion apiece. The cushions, baskets and even some of the tins of food made the trip regularly - a sort of shuttle service, bringing Shell people in and out of Shanghai. They go back again with two couples who are the last of the company to be leaving Shanghai, and no-one seems to be scheduled for coming up. Of course you remember how pullmans are, with the bunk that comes down and the curtains that are put up. This train did without the curtains, so you lay, of course, in view of everybody else - nor did they ever turn the lights off! But the train was surprisingly clean, and one man seemed to spend the whole day sweeping up the length of the train, and then back. Also we were given big heavy mugs, with a lid, and once a day a new bunch of tea leaves. Throughout the day a man came along with a huge watering can of boiling water, and filled you up. Excellent green tea, too. There was a dining car, and the Chinese food didn't look at all bad, but we were supplied with a roast chicken, a duck, a large basket of strawberries, loaves of bread and fresh butter, and tins of fruit, so I didn't even approach the diner, except to pass through and have a look at third class. Think I'd rather be third on the ship than the train. The hardest, upright seats, and narrow, and all very crowded. There they had to sit up for the two nights, but some class seemed a bit more superior with skinny shelves, in tiers of three, where you could stretch out. Reminded me of my Godmother in Japan, who leaned out the third class window and yelled to Machi, "We are departing in tiers". One absurd thing is the music which is put on, both in the train, and outside, as the train comes in and leaves a station. Martial and otherwise, and Russian and Chinese. The stations have large pictures of Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, and other grandees, and the station officials, and almost the workmen, stand smartly at attention as the train draws in!

The country is not what could be described as very exciting. The whole thirty six hours was through flat plains, but very often there were Chinese-looking jagged mountains in the distance, and that made it a bit more fun. I didn't know you could get such stretches of land in China, so scarcely settled, but it's not surprising as I don't know what they'd eat. It is very arid, sometimes not a tree for miles, yet they were growing sad crops, or trying to, and some people said how skinny they all looked, and that it was the famine area, but they looked like all skinny Chinese do to me.

(letter continues)