My First Impression of China: Washingtonians’ First Trips to the Middle Kingdom

By Wendy Liu

Praise for My First Impression of China Today, the sense of distance between China and the U.S. has greatly diminished. We remain different societies with at least partially different values and expectations, with each countrys citizens feeling pride in their national accomplishments and each government looks on the other with what appears to be growing concern and perhaps fear. But these accounts by Washingtonians highlight that that is not all there is to the relationship between the United States and China. And perhaps these recollections tell us that governmental concerns are the least important aspect of the ties between our two countries. David Bachman, Professor, University of Washington

The year 2014 marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the normalization of the diplomatic relations between the United States and China. Author Wendy Liu chose to honor that relationship by compiling thirty-five essays that detail some Americans first impressions of their trip to China.

My First Impression of China presents reflections from a group of prominent Washingtonians, including those who established the Washington-Sichuan friendship-state relationship and the Seattle-Chongqing sister-city relationship. Their first trips to China took place from 1973 to 2008, covering the time the two countries cautiously opened liaison offices in each others capitals to the time of the Beijing Olympics.

My First Impression of China provides insight into the changes in American attitudes toward China as well as changes in Chinas political, cultural, and technological landscape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491744789

Wendy Liu

Wendy Liu is originally from Xi’an, China. She earned a master’s degree in Technology And Science Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been a consultant, translator, and writer. Her writings include op-eds on China in The Seattle Times. Liu has lived in Seattle, Washington, for twenty-five years.

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Copyright © 2014 Wendy Liu.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4477-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4478-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014915193

iUniverse rev. date:   08/29/2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

1.   Darryl Johnson Story - First Trip: 1973

2.   Dan Evans Story – First Trip: 1974

3.   Paul Thomas Story - First Trip: 1974

4.   Stan Barer Story - First Trip: 1975

5.   Jim Mcdermott Story - First Trip: 1977

6.   David Hughes Story - First Trip: 1978

7.   Joe Borich Story - First Trip: 1978

8.   Dori Jones Yang Story - First Trip: 1979

9.   Mimi Gates Story - First Trip: 1979

10.   Ruth Walsh Mcintyre Story - First Trip: 1979

11.   Bill Glassford Story - First Trip: 1980

12.   Mike Craig Story - First Trip: 1980

13.   Steve Harrell Story - First Trip: 1980

14.   Tom & Mary Brucker Story – First Trip: 1980

15.   Larry Clarkson Story - First Trip: 1981

16.   Bart Fite Story - First Trip: 1982

17.   John Spellman Story - First Trip: 1982

18.   Wayne Prochaska Story – First Trip: 1983

19.   Ed Nixon Story - First Trip: 1984

20.   Ralph Munro Story - First Trip: 1984

21.   Bill Stafford Story - First Trip: 1985

22.   Dennis Bracy Story - First Trip: 1985

23.   Jim Dawson Story - First Trip: 1985

24.   Jim Simpson Story – First Trip: 1985

25.   John Fluke Story – First Trip: 1985

26.   Mic Dinsmore Story - First Trip: 1985

27.   Bruce Ramsey Story - First Trip: 1986

28.   Pat Davis Story - First Trip: 1987

29.   Paige Miller Story - First Trip: 1988

30.   Greg Youtz Story - First Trip: 1991

31.   Peter Rose Story - First Trip: 1993

32.   Todd Fryhover Story - First Trip: 1994

33.   Jon Geiger Story - First Trip: 2001

34.   Joel Chusid Story - First Trip: 2002

35.   Steve Wilhelm Story - First Trip: 2008

For fellow Washingtonians, among them Michael who has his work cut out to understand the complex relationship between the U.S., his birth country, and China, his parents’.

FOREWORD

Today, Hainan and Delta airlines fly directly from Sea-Tac to Beijing. While the lengthy flight may be wearying, first trips to China are much less remarkable than 40 years ago. You go from one modern city and airport to a much larger modern airport and city. The sense of being in a foreign country is not nearly as stark as it was four decades ago.

To be sure, first trips anywhere are exciting, exposing us to new experiences, adventures, challenges and opportunities. For anyone visiting China for the first time, there is anticipation, surprise, perhaps several ah-hah moments, when something you’ve read, seen, or heard about resonates with an experience there, and you see your prior impressions confirmed. Conversely, something happens and your preconceptions are turned upside down.

These 35 recollections of first visits to China by prominent Washingtonians generally speak to a different, earlier time. Seven of these essays occurred even before the United States and the People’s Republic of China extended mutual diplomatic relations to each other; four of them occurred when Mao Zedong was still alive. China was a very different place then, and as subsequent commentaries here illustrate, the sense of physical, political, and psychological differences between Washingtonians and Chinese continued well into the 1980s, but greatly diminished thereafter.

China in the early to mid-1970s was for most Americans a truly alien place. While the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution had slowly begun to recede, China remained largely closed off from the outside world. Ordinary tourism didn’t exist. China and the United States had been at war with each other in Korea, and Chinese troops were in North Vietnam, firing anti-aircraft weapons at U.S. planes as part of the war in Vietnam. You couldn’t buy anything from China, you couldn’t go to China, and even to express interest in China could be politically fraught. From the perspective of the U.S. government, China was forbidden. To try to go there was to risk sanction. For its part, China was hardly more welcoming of Americans. To the Chinese government and many of its people, the United States was equally as forbidden and off-limits, and there was no incentive for ordinary Chinese to express much curiosity about it.

Despite the official hostility, American curiosity about China persisted. Some of this came from old missionary families who had spent the better part of their lives in China. To this tradition was coupled a long-time fascination with China which seemed much stronger than immediate reasons might justify. Something about China excited the imaginations of many Americans: exotic, different, alien, and after 1949, forbidden, all these attributes surprisingly kept interest about China alive. The experience of the American war in Vietnam, and growing disaffection with it, caused critics to question whether the premises underlying that war were faulty: was China, or North Vietnam, really a fundamental threat to American liberty? Pressure grew for new approaches, new knowledge or really any direct personal knowledge of China. By the early 1960s, major foundations were pumping money into training new generations of China scholars so that Americans might better understand the quite inexplicable China of Great Leaps Forward and Cultural Revolutions.

This context helps to explain why going to China for many of the Washingtonians recording their recollections here was such a huge event. As with many such symbolically important events, words may not be able to fully capture the intensity and wide-eyed feelings one might confront by finally getting into China, and being among the first Americans to see that country after so long a rupture in relations. Everything was new about China, even when superficially there weren’t all that many signs of progress in China. The old, famous tourist sites were around; the famous Chinese hospitality was ever present, though mingled with the police state concern about those who, because they were different, needed to be controlled and supervised. But for many of the accounts of China in the 1970s and 1980s, the overwhelming impression is one of distance—that materially there was a huge gap between China and the United States.

Yet, as a number of these recollections show, and which to this reader, mark some of the best of the insights here, Americans and Chinese could on occasion make genuine human contact. Of course this was hard because of language, social values and expectations, and because, much of the time, the Chinese government wasn’t interested in visitors going off the prescribed path. But a number of these accounts speak of long-time friendships forged, relationships established and reaffirmed, and to the ability of Americans and Chinese to imagine themselves in each other’s shoes, to find their common humanity; and to forge bonds that tie our two countries together.

Today, and as reflected in the post-1990 recollections here, the sense of distance between China and the U.S. has greatly diminished. People relate to people much more easily, chances for real interactions are much greater, and banqueting and toasting play a smaller role in first-time experiences. We remain different societies with at least partially different values and expectations, with each country’s citizens feeling pride in their national accomplishments. We still don’t understand each other all that well, and each government looks on the other with what appears to be growing concern and perhaps fear. But these accounts by Washingtonians highlight that that is not all there is to the relationship between the United States and China. And perhaps these recollections tell us that governmental concerns are the least important aspect of the ties between our two countries.

David Bachman

Professor, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

President, Washington State China Relations Council (2005-2006)

June 2014

PREFACE

Several factors went into my putting together this special collection of stories.

The publication of My First Trip to China by Hong Kong journalist

Kin-ming Liu in 2012 made me think: Why not a collection of first trip to China stories by Washingtonians? From writing the book Connecting Washington and China—The Story of the Washington State China Relations Council, I know how strong the tradition is in the Evergreen State in building relations with the People’s Republic and how many pioneers there are in this endeavor, each with a unique story.

With that thought in mind in the spring of 2013, I then realized that 2014 would mark the 35th anniversary of the normalization of the diplomatic relations between the United States and China. What better way to celebrate for Washingtonians and their Chinese counterparts who care about this relationship? It is for this milestone that I chose to include 35 stories in this collection.

As a Washingtonian who is also a former citizen of China, this book is also a remedy in disguise for a serious case of curiosity about how Americans saw my birth country for the first time.

The participants in this project are some of Washington’s government, business, academic and community leaders, including those who established the Washington-Sichuan friendship-state relationship and the Seattle-Chongqing sister-city relationship. Their first trips to China took place from 1973 to 2008, covering the time the two countries cautiously opened liaison offices in each other’s capitals to the time of the Beijing Olympics. They tell valuable stories not only in terms of the history of Washington state-China relations, but also in the overall understanding of U.S.-China relations, especially for future generations, American or Chinese.

I am honored by all the participants in this project who either let me interview them or submitted their stories. I appreciate very much Joe Borich, past and longest serving president of the Washington State China Relations Council, for being my advisor on this project and Bruce Ramsey, former editorial writer for the Seattle Times, my editorial advisor.

You will find in these pages evocative, embracing, even endearing stories: from a governor who saw his China trip as the most important accomplishment of his administration; from a reporter who was probably the first American journalist to hear Deng Xiaoping mention communistic capitalism in an interview; from an attorney who talked into the chandelier in his hotel room to get message across to his Chinese host; from a business executive who couldn’t get China out of his blood. Be ready to be inspired by the stories as well as the story tellers, who represent the best of the Washington half of the Washington state-China relations.

Wendy Liu

June 2014

Seattle, WA

1.   DARRYL JOHNSON STORY -

FIRST TRIP: 1973

Darryl%20Johnson.jpg

Bio: Darryl N. Johnson had a distinguished career as a Foreign Service Officer, including serving in Hong Kong, Moscow, Beijing, and as U.S. Ambassador to Thailand. He holds a B.A. from the University of Washington, and attended University of Puget Sound, University of Minnesota and Princeton University.

I awoke in Hong Kong on a damp spring morning on June 7, 1973. It was my 35th birthday, and it marked the culmination of my efforts to travel to mainland China before leaving Hong Kong for my next Foreign Service assignment in Moscow. My then spouse and I boarded the train for the hour-long ride from Hong Kong to Lowu, the crossing point for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). After the usual procedures at the border, we continued on to Guangzhou.

Coming to mainland China at that time gave us the opportunity to learn the historical context and the contrast with later visits — the sense of being part of something really significant. With large steps and small, China was emerging on the world stage after nearly a century of virtual isolation.

When I joined the Foreign Service in 1965, the United States and China had virtually no official contact. I thought this was a very abnormal situation that was certain to change, and I recall telling my State Department personnel officer that I expected the U.S. and the PRC to have some form of official relationship within ten years, and I wanted to be a part of it. I underestimated; it was less than seven years until President Nixon visited Beijing in 1972.

By then, I had studied the Chinese language for two years in Washington, DC, and Taiwan, followed by a three-year assignment to the China Mainland Section of the American Consulate General in Hong Kong. My job during those three years was to report on China’s external economic and political relations. Much had happened in China, and between the U.S. and China, during that period, and more was coming. It was a challenging job that required the capacity to digest a large quantity of material from all sources, and to turn it into reports that met the needs of the U.S. government. Now I was about to leave Hong Kong and I really wanted to visit China before moving on. So I sought and received permission from the Department of State in Washington, and the temporary team in Beijing, to travel to the PRC in June 1973.

After we arrived in Guangzhou, we were transported to the Dong Fang (Eastern) Hotel, the only foreigner class hotel in the city. The rooms were small and the weather was hot. We were asked if we wanted air conditioning in our room; I eagerly accepted. After dinner we walked around the area. I noted few cars, nearly all of which were old Soviet models. The next day I took a more complete sampling. At the busiest intersection, and the only one with a traffic light, the number of vehicles that crossed in all four directions was six in four minutes. A similar survey today would show several hundred vehicles — and great clouds of exhaust.

At this time, the sight of foreigners on the streets of Guangzhou was rare. China was still virtually closed to the outside world. Therefore, everywhere we went we became something of a public spectacle with a laughing, chattering crowd of kids following us. They were not hostile or rude, but seemed amazed and a little shy of these odd looking strangers. Every time we turned around, they would laugh and scatter. The only place where we could go without such escorts was in a store, where there were few goods and few service people. Back in our hotel room, I turned on the air conditioning before going to bed. After midnight I woke up in a sweat; the air conditioning was not working. I called the hotel desk and was informed that the air conditioning only ran until 11:00 p.m. because by then everyone would be asleep!

In Beijing there were more people and even fewer cars. The main mode of transportation was the bicycle. We were fortunate to be able to borrow bikes from the Canadian Embassy people with whom we were staying. We walked or rode to many of the main sights in Beijing, which is quite flat.

The level and frequency of contacts between the U.S. and China began to expand in 1971 with several small events that carried large consequences. One such event was the Chinese invitation to the U.S. ping-pong team to come to China after an international tournament in Japan in April 1971. This gesture was followed by the secret visit to Beijing by Dr. Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s National Security Adviser, in June and July 1971. The Kissinger trip prepared the way for President Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972.

In addition to these highly visible steps, there were many others that were less visible. Our job in the China Mainland Section of the Consulate General in Hong Kong was to report to Washington and to other posts on developments in China. These were heady days in the China business, especially in Hong Kong, where virtually every conversation began and ended with China. But despite the large U.S. presence in Hong Kong, we and most other observers had limited understanding of the internal dynamics of Chinese politics and economics.

For example, there was much news and commentary about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – Mao Zedong’s campaign to destroy traditional Chinese culture and to thwart political challengers – at huge cost in human lives and economic and political instability. Yet even with our best judgment, we had difficulty identifying who was making the key decisions and why.

This limitation became painfully clear in early September 1971, when China’s number-two leader, Defense Minister Lin Biao, suddenly disappeared. There was no announcement and no public speculation. Several days later we found out that the newest edition of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, with Lin’s photo as a front piece, had disappeared from book shelves in the mainland, but not in Hong Kong. We also learned that all civil aviation in the PRC had completely stopped. A few days later