For this coming Tuesday’s eFlyer, I’ve been writing about the 10th anniversary celebrations that are going on, marking the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. Ten years!

It made me think back to my first visit to Hong Kong. It was one of those three-day transpacific trips that leave you beyond jetlagged, in this case to observe the opening of the Conrad Hong Kong. I knew it was before the handover, but I looked up the date—it was 1990. Time flies, doesn’t it?

Usually I can remember exactly when I went somewhere by the age of my daughter at the time. That’s because she always had unusually specific gift requests. When she was small, and had no idea of geography, the requests had nothing to do with where I was going. I think she imagined me as a kind of Santa Claus, popping around the world in order to deliver presents.

I can date a lot of my trips by the challenges she posed. Before the age of five, they were nonspecific; she’d be happy with an airplane model, or a stuffed toy. By the age of eight or nine, she had an idea of where I was going, and what they had there—asking for French perfume, for example. But in between, there were some unusual years.

Two requests stand out. I remember going to Brussels to follow the commercial counselor in the U.S. consulate around, for a “day in the life” article, and spending my free time scouring the shops for a teddy bear hand puppet—which I found, by the way. And in Berlin, I went to the famous KaDeWe department store to look for (and, luckily, to find) bunkbeds for her dolls.

But Hong Kong was a blank. I remember shopping my brains out; the trip was in the winter, and I know I bought quite a few beautiful silk robes for $10 each, which seemed incredibly inexpensive and also easy to pack. I checked off a lot of people on my Christmas list that way, but what did I buy my daughter? And then I remembered: In one of those great discount jewelry stores in Hong Kong, I bought a tiny charm with the Chinese ideograph for “love.” I bought a larger one for myself, and chains for them both.

Even today, when she’s a grown woman living 1,200 miles away, we wear our matching necklaces when we want to feel close. It’s amazing to realize that we’ve been doing that for 17 years. Time flies.

-Mary Hunt, Editor, eFlyer