Travel Quote by John Pomfret

The sentence performs a small, almost invisible act of credential-building: it turns a biographical detail into a claim of vantage point. “Lucky enough” frames the trip as both personal fortune and historical accident, gently deflecting any suspicion of privilege or gatekeeping while still asserting access. Pomfret isn’t bragging; he’s establishing that he was there before it was normal to be there, and that matters.

“China in 1980” is doing heavy lifting. For an American (or Western) traveler, that date signals a hinge moment: just after Mao’s death, during the early Deng era, when “Reform and Opening” was beginning but had not yet solidified into the export-powered, globally enmeshed China most audiences recognize. Calling it “quite early” is understatement with a purpose. It cues the listener to hear what follows as eyewitness knowledge from a rare window, when the country was still opaque, bureaucratically controlled, and less mediated by tourism, foreign investment, or today’s constant information flows.

The intent is practical: to anchor authority without sounding authoritative. The subtext is, I saw the baseline before the transformation, so I can speak to change with more credibility than someone arriving later, after the narrative had already been packaged. It also hints at the randomness that shapes expertise: careers and “China hands” reputations often begin not with grand designs but with a timely opening, seized at the right historical moment.