论文部分内容阅读
I’m a few years older than the People’s Republic of China, but hardly an infant compared to China’s vast history and culture.China and I have intersected at many points, and I want to tell you about a few of them.
When I was a child, China was the mysterious other world that missionaries talked about at church, showing pictures of people who looked different but were their friends.The missionaries were talking about, and working in, several Asian countries; but they were all China to me.
As I grew, I learned to distinguish separate countries in Asia, each with its own identity; but I saw that Chinese culture and language permeate the Far East.Later I could see a fuller exchange: the influences of neighboring countries and cultures on China—such as the impact of Buddhism from India and Islam from the Middle East and, later, McDonalds from the U.S.The tide changed again as the migration of Chinese people brought a richer cultural mix to all parts of the world.
People—individuals—have been an important part of my intersections with China.After meeting the people, the place grows in importance.
In the late 1960s in my hometown, my 4-year-old son became friends with a Chinese girl in nursery school, and her mother and I shared conversation and cooking.
I spent much of the 1970s in college and graduate school.During that time, I read a Chinese-American woman’s book, describing her feelings and reactions on visiting China for the first time.Seeing China through her eyes gave me a taste of Chinese life.
On the job in the 1980s, I became friends with a Chinese man from Hong Kong as we shared orientation and first projects together, and I met his wife-to-be, who was from Taiwan.They had met at college in Tennessee; he spoke Cantonese and she spoke Mandarin, so English was their common language at first.I participated in their wedding, and in celebrating the birth of their first child and, later, their U.S. citizenship.
It was because of this couple that I went to China for the first time in 1983.We planned that I would travel with them to China, visit their families in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and spend a week in the PRC.That plan didn’t work out, for several reasons, but the planning whetted my appetite to see China through my own eyes.With the help of National Geographic Society’s Journey into China, a book (published in 1976) of essays and photographs from all over China, I picked places I most wanted to see and found a tour that would take me to most of them (including Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, and Shaanxi in the north, and Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangzhou in the south).The tour was blessed with a tour leader who was interested in the people and culture as well as the places, and it was an eye-opening experience.
Returning home, I wanted to keep learning about China, and I joined the US-China Peoples Friendship Association (USCPFA), whose goal is to promote friendship and understanding between the peoples of the U.S. and China.At my first Chinese New Year dinner, I sat next to a Chinese man who came from Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi Province.We became fast friends because I was the only American he knew who had been to Taiyuan, and because I was very interested in learning taiji, which he led in Nashville’s Centennial Park each Saturday morning.
When I was a child, China was the mysterious other world that missionaries talked about at church, showing pictures of people who looked different but were their friends.The missionaries were talking about, and working in, several Asian countries; but they were all China to me.
As I grew, I learned to distinguish separate countries in Asia, each with its own identity; but I saw that Chinese culture and language permeate the Far East.Later I could see a fuller exchange: the influences of neighboring countries and cultures on China—such as the impact of Buddhism from India and Islam from the Middle East and, later, McDonalds from the U.S.The tide changed again as the migration of Chinese people brought a richer cultural mix to all parts of the world.
People—individuals—have been an important part of my intersections with China.After meeting the people, the place grows in importance.
In the late 1960s in my hometown, my 4-year-old son became friends with a Chinese girl in nursery school, and her mother and I shared conversation and cooking.
I spent much of the 1970s in college and graduate school.During that time, I read a Chinese-American woman’s book, describing her feelings and reactions on visiting China for the first time.Seeing China through her eyes gave me a taste of Chinese life.
On the job in the 1980s, I became friends with a Chinese man from Hong Kong as we shared orientation and first projects together, and I met his wife-to-be, who was from Taiwan.They had met at college in Tennessee; he spoke Cantonese and she spoke Mandarin, so English was their common language at first.I participated in their wedding, and in celebrating the birth of their first child and, later, their U.S. citizenship.
It was because of this couple that I went to China for the first time in 1983.We planned that I would travel with them to China, visit their families in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and spend a week in the PRC.That plan didn’t work out, for several reasons, but the planning whetted my appetite to see China through my own eyes.With the help of National Geographic Society’s Journey into China, a book (published in 1976) of essays and photographs from all over China, I picked places I most wanted to see and found a tour that would take me to most of them (including Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, and Shaanxi in the north, and Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangzhou in the south).The tour was blessed with a tour leader who was interested in the people and culture as well as the places, and it was an eye-opening experience.
Returning home, I wanted to keep learning about China, and I joined the US-China Peoples Friendship Association (USCPFA), whose goal is to promote friendship and understanding between the peoples of the U.S. and China.At my first Chinese New Year dinner, I sat next to a Chinese man who came from Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi Province.We became fast friends because I was the only American he knew who had been to Taiyuan, and because I was very interested in learning taiji, which he led in Nashville’s Centennial Park each Saturday morning.