By Janet W.S Suryasta-Cheung

　　I remember in 1989 my parents told me I was to move from my little house in Leeds, UK to a place called Shanghai. Shanghai? Excuse me, where is that? Every weekend I knew that my mum would take me to Mac Donalds for a Fillet o Fish as a treat. That was about to all change.

　　I arrived in Shanghai back in the days of Liang Piao ( Ration tickets) and FEC ( Foreign Exchange Currency). It was strange to me why we were not allowed to buy rice, flour and sugar without these little blue, orange and yellow tokens. Since there were very few toys to buy or anything I could read or watch on TV my mum would give these to me to play, in a way sort of like monopoly money. Till this day I still have some of them left, now they would be considered part of history for China and part of my childhood history as well.

　　In 1990 they opened the first KFC along the bund. By now I was able to speak mandarin, and had grown accustomed to finding bricks and sticks to build forts with my friends. There really wasn’t much else to do, besides riding my bike to the Zoo which was right next to my house in Long Bai Hong Qiao. Hong Qiao was a deserted area, no development and surely not the glamorous little self contained city that it is today. Walking into KFC, I thought I would finally have a little piece of home. I asked kindly and excitely for French fries, pointed enthusiastically at the photo above the cashier. I was answered with “sorry that is just a photo, we don’t have fries”. Slightly heart broken, I decided that Mashed Potatoes would do me just fine, after once again pointing to the photo to the left of the French fries, I was replied with “NO that also is just a photo for decoration”. Feeling more and more despair, I realised it was chicken or chicken or nothing at all.

　　How times have changed since then. Now you can walk along the streets and be greeted with KFC, Mc Donalds, the newly opened Burger King, on every single available corner.

　　I went to school in SAS (Shanghai American School) back in the day when it was still located in the No.3 Girls school on Jiang Su Lu. There were just a handful of us lost children, that had moved from Western cultures, into something very alien. I specifically remember there was only one 9th grader. The poor guys year book photo was of him and himself only. We had a small play ground, and our cheerleading group used tree branches as pom poms. I have been told that there are 1 or 2 teachers still left in shanghai from back in the day. However now they are teaching in a state of the art campus, known around the world. Our small little niche of foreigners has turned into a full bloom world that resembles and almost surpasses some of the best universities around.

　　When I left Shanghai in 1992 I never looked back and thought I would