Last fall I was doing some research into the Columbia Circle housing development in Shanghai where my grandfather and family lived from about 1930 until 1945. I discovered that the family of the sci-fi author J G Ballard also lived there. Ballard wrote the book “Empire of the Sun” which was made into a movie by Steven Spielberg.
This took me to an on-line Ballard fan club, and a few posts later I was contacted by a man who told me he lived across the street from our family home on Amherst Road ( now Xinhua Road ) in Shanghai. His name is Andy and he wrote that he could see our house as he was typing his email to me. It was night, but he said that if I liked, he’d go across and take some photos the following morning.
As promised, when I checked my mail the following day, the photos were there. Along with the pictures, Andy also sent a hand drawn map showing the locations the photos were taken from.
Over the next few months Andy and I kept in touch. Then one day he told me that the Xinhua neighborhood was doing a Heritage Event and that he’d noticed that they’d used a graphic of our Columbia Circle house as their theme. He asked me for my address and offered to send me some of the promotional items; a small notebook, some face masks, etc. These item arrived via DHL in a matter of a few days.
