"Felicitas Titus's wonderful book not only brings us the sights of a city now greatly changed, it will help future generations understand the pleasure and excitement caused by the sending and receiving of a few words scribbled on a bright small picture from a faraway place." —Susan Naquin, author of Peking: Temples and City Life

Felicitas Titus grew up in the foreign concession in Hankow, China, under Chiang Kai-shek, at a time when traditional Chinese culture still flourished. She visited old Beijing, then known as Peking, as a child and later studied there for two and a half years, during World War Two. She experienced the Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1937, left Hankow during the allied bombardments, and worked in postwar China until the Communist victory in 1949. She eventually completed her education in the United States and taught college there. Her nostalgia for China prompted her to begin collecting these vintage postcards. She still considers China her homeland.

Foreword writer, Susan Naquin is professor of History and East Asian Studies at Princeton University, is the author of Millenarian Rebellion in China, Shantung Rebellion, and Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900. She is also coauthor with Evelyn Rawski of Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century and coeditor of Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China.