When Lloyd Townley was 6, his family drove to Sydney Airport to pick up his grandmother and her second husband. They were Russian musicians who had been living in China for decades and arrived off a plane from Harbin in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China.
Known as China’s ice city, Harbin has long winters. The gift Townley’s grandmother brought from Harbin reflected the city’s freezing weather—a winter jacket. “I still remember the padded winter jacket that she brought for my sister and me. It was so warm that we hardly needed them in Sydney,” he recalled.
However, the experience seeded the connection between the boy and the seemingly distant
