In the summer of 1974, Canadian Greg Girard, then aged 18, boarded a freighter from San Francisco to Hong Kong, arriving 18 days later to start what would become a love affair with East Asia that continues to this day.
“It’s wild to think that it has been 50 years since I first landed in Hong Kong,” says Girard via Zoom from his home city, Vancouver. Almost exactly five decades to the day, in fact: the immigration stamp in his passport reads August 4, 1974.