@nytimes reporter covering China and Asia, but mostly China. Got a tip? alexandra.stevenson@nytimes.com GPG
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In Shenzhen and made a trip to a tiny footbridge that connects it to Hong Kong. Not many seem to use it anymore. But some 65 years ago it was the only way into China and my dad walked across it as one of the first reporters into what they called “Red China” at the time.pic.twitter.com/bk8zCxGZEK
Getting to this checkpoint had been a long journey. Finally holding a flimsy piece of paper that had a Swiss watermark and Chinese characters, he crossed the bridge. It was just 20 yards long, he wrote, “but for me it was the longest journey of my life.”
China was closed off to much of the world at that time in 1954 and his coveted visa, “was really like holding a ticket to the moon.” Here is an article I recently discovered in which he described the experiencepic.twitter.com/bg4v97w07r
When he went through to the other side what he found was a village “nestled behind a small hill,” all but invisible from Hong Kong. Today it is Shenzhen, a modern city with one of the tallest buildings in the world.
On my own coveted China visa, a multiple month one that gives me just one entry, I couldn’t leave Shenzhen to go to Hong Kong and walk the exact same route. And from the ground I couldn’t see Hong Kong. But I did find a vantage point from which to see the other side.pic.twitter.com/VDZrK2h7U1
My dad never got the chance to see Shenzhen and I’ll never have a chance to tell him about how it’s all turned out. (Though he did visit me when I lived in China a decade ago.) Retracing his steps through his writing feels like the closest thing to having that conversation.pic.twitter.com/dBKF3q2Hd3
Wow - a time capsule from the past. Do you know when they closed this? My extended family went through these border crossings 30+ years ago as they were moving from Guangdong to HK
The footbridge I went to is still open, just doesn’t seem to be used that often. There seem to be a few different crossings. This one is called Luo Hu or Lo Wu .
Where is the footbridge exactly? Luohu?
Yes. Luo Hu on the Shenzhen side
I believe this is the same pedestrian bridge I crossed twice in 1978, when China finally promoted small tour groups into Guangzhou.pic.twitter.com/I0vUhoKEl6
Oh wow, this is such a cool picture. Do you have more?
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