In spring 1978 my mother Päivikki Ollila visited China. She took hundreds of photos and tape recorded on C-cassettes more than six hours of her impressions of the journey.

Afterwards she wanted to share her experiences. She gave several lectures showing slides and telling about her journey. In those days, before the present day mass tourism, visiting China was not so common thing to do as it is today. My mother, who worked as a teacher and a counsellor, was a great friend of Chinese culture, and also an active member in Finnish-Chinese society’s Tampere branch. That gave her the opportunity to join the trip.

My mother did not take many photos before her journey (or after it). However, many of these shots show vision, sensibility and humour. I remember how after her trip (I was seventeen then) my sisters and I helped her with the slide frames. In the past years I have occasionally looked at these photos with great interest and enthusiasm.

My mother passed away by Alzheimer’s syndrome in 2002. After that I got the idea to make this web site, to share these rare pictures and recordings with the rest of the world. I think she as well would have wished that. Now she can get much wider audience to this interesting material than just by giving lectures.

I would like to express my gratitude to master Zhang Changwang for his wonderful piece of calligraphy, which I have used as a part of the lay out of this site. The meaning of it is “My mother in China”. I also want to thank my sisters for their encouragement and support, and Terhi Mikkolainen, Heikki Matikainen and my partner Hanna for their help.

This web site is dedicated to the memory of my mother Päivikki Ollila (1933-2002).

Simo Ollila

Tampere, Finland 31.8.2006