JD'S 1979 British Passport

This passport was issued on June 22nd, 1979 in Peterborough. Since returning from the U.S.A. in October the previous year, I had been killing time at my parents' home in Northampton, filling in with some teaching at a local community college. Probably I had already signed up for my postgraduate Chinese course in London, 1979-80.

The first stamps here are from a casual short trip to the U.S.A. in Fall of 1981.
Then follows my spell teaching college in China, 1982-83.
After returning from China I took up contract software development work in London. In the Fall of 1985 the agent I worked through asked if I would do a contract in New York. The deal was to work one year on a guest-worker visa for First Boston, a New York investment bank. If the firm liked my work and I wanted to stay in the U.S., they would sponsor me for permanent residence. I agreed, and moved to the U.S. in October 1985.
I had been corresponding with Rosie, who was now living in Jilin City, Northeast China. Shortly after I settled in New York we decided to get married. This involved much paperwork and two trips to China.
The first trip, July-August 1986, was to get married. We accomplished this on August 6th in Jilin. Rosie had no passport or visa, though. At that time a Chinese citizen could only get a passport by proving some strong reason. Being married to a foreigner was sufficiently strong; so Rosie started the application process while I returned to New York.
In November 1986, Rosie's papers all ready, I went back to China to fetch her.
The remaining stamps in this passport, pages 24 to 27, are from 1987 and 1988. I have identified them individually as best I can.

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The passport has some pages of front matter showing date of issue, my picture, and so on: here, here, and here. At some point after January 1979 the British authorities stopped taking an interest in how much money travellers were taking out of the country (or at least, they stopped requiring us to report the sums in our passports); so that page from the back of the passport is henceforth blank.

I have listed these stamps below in chronological order. That's not necessarily the order they appear in if you just flip through the passport's pages. A later stamp may be on an earlier page. The location of a stamp is entirely at the whim of the stamping official. Clicking on the date at left will bring up the page with the stamp.

U.S.A. trip, 1981.
8/20/81	U.S. visa, B-2.
9/1/81	Entering the U.S.A.
Teaching in China, 1982-83.
9/20/82	China visa.
10/4/82	Entering China
1/14/83	Chinese enter/exit permit.
1/22/83	Supplementary permit. (I am not clear of the significance of this one.)
2/5/83	Leaving China. I took a short Lunar New Year break to visit friends in Hong Kong.
2/5/83	Entering Hong Kong.
2/21/83	Leaving Hong Kong.
2/21/83	Entering China.
4/11/83	Chinese enter/exit permit.
7/1/83	Exit permit from China.
7/23/83	Leaving China.
Moving to the U.S.A., 1985.
10/21/85	U.S. visa, H-1.
10/24/85	Entering the U.S.A.
Getting married in China, 1986.
6/23/86	China visa.
7/28/86	Entering China.
8/8/86	Leaving China.
8/8/86	Entering Hong Kong.
8/10/86	Leaving Hong Kong.
8/10/86	Entering the U.S.A.
Going to China to fetch Rosie, 1986.
11/2/86	Entering the U.S.A. I have no idea why. Business trip?
11/10/86	China visa.
11/17/86	Entering China.
11/22/86	Leaving China.
11/22/86	Entering the U.S.A. (San Francisco).
Various trips, 1987-88.
7/7/87	U.S. visa (H-1) renewed.
7/19/87	Entering the U.S.A. This was when returning from trip to England with Rosie, to introduce her to my family.
9/16/87	Entering the U.S.A., also I think on my return from England. I had gone there on the news of my mother having suffered a stroke.
8/6/88	Entering Canada. This was a wedding-anniversary trip to Niagara Falls.
10/28/88	U.S. visa (H-1) renewed.
12/18/88	Entering the U.S.A., perhaps after a visit to my mother.

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