Dear Shaded Viewers,

There are two reasons for which I love Shanghai: the bizarre skyscrapers (sort of oriental version of Manhattan) and the third floor of Fuyou Antiques Market. I always go there. There is a booth, the last on the right, that sells photo albums and old postcards (from 1920s to 1950s). Three years ago, during my first trip to China – everything seemed so unfamiliar – after spending two hours looking at someone else’s photographs, I found by chance a Vesuvius postcard (written in chinese!) sent from Naples to Shanghai. Date: 1943. It was wartime in Italy and exactly that year and in that city my grandmother was volunteering in the Red Cross, living in Galleria Umberto I

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