My First Impression Of China

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.

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 country's 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 other's 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 China's political, cultural, and technological landscape.

Alpha C Chiang, a renowned economist, and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Connecticut, is best-known for his classic textbook — Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics.In this memoirs, he tells the entertaining, scary, embarrassing, glorifying and surreal tales that colored his life.On the academic side, Alpha describes in detail his scholastic journey, including why and how he created one of the most popular books on mathematical methods in economics, as well as the experiences of his teaching career. On the nonacademic side, he describes his ventures into his many hobbies, the spices of his life, including Chinese opera, ballroom dancing, painting and calligraphy, photography, piano, music composition, playwriting, and even magic. Such tales round out the depiction of a colorful life.What's behind his unusual name, Alpha? What schooling disaster tripped him at a young age? What surreal occurrence did he experience at a cliff at age 8? What major miracle changed his family? How did he become a loan shark when he was a graduate student at Columbia University? What Hollywood glamour star mysteriously materialized within inches of him when he was working on a TV show in his student days? How did he conquer a serious phobia and eventually become an acclaimed professor? What motivated his writing of his celebrated book? And what funny, embarrassing, and memorable events occurred in his teaching career?This book is a unique story about a unique life.

Subasree Mohan was elated when she learned that her family would be moving out of India; she was nonplussed when she knew that their next destination would be China. The political scenario and the iron curtain around China always left doubts about the country. This book by Subasree Mohan transforms that thinking. She makes the reader live through the moments captured during her stay in China. This is not a travelogue but a firsthand experience of Chinese culture and grandeur of a fellow Asian who lived in China for several years. At the end of this book, one cannot stop admiring China as she walks the reader through the various positive aspects of the Chinese culture. To quote what she says in her last line of the book, let us salute Big Brother China the Superpower.

Jerry W. Ward Jr. (b. 1943) has published nonfiction, literary criticism, encyclopedias, anthologies, and poetry. Ward is also a highly respected scholar with a specialty in African American literature and has been recognized internationally as one of the leading experts on Richard Wright. Ward was Lawrence Durgin Professor of Literature at Tougaloo College, served as a member of both the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Advisory Committee for the US Commission on Civil Rights, and cofounded the Richard Wright Circle and the Richard Wright Newsletter. He has won numerous awards, and in 2001 he was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. Conversations with Jerry W. Ward Jr. aims to add an indispensable source to American literature and African American studies. It offers an account of Ward's intelligent and thoughtful responses to questions about literature, literary criticism, teaching, writing, civil rights, Black aesthetics, race, and culture. Throughout the fourteen interviews collected in this volume that range from 1995 to 2021, Ward demonstrates his responsibilities as a contemporary scholar, professor, writer, and social critic. His charming personality glimmers through these interviews, which, in a sense, are inner views that allow us to see into his mind, understand his heart, and appreciate his wit.

During his career at The New York Times, Harrison Salisbury served as the bureau chief in post-World War II Moscow and reported from Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and in retirement witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre firsthand. Davis and Trani's engaging biography of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist makes use of Salisbury's personal archive of interviews, articles, and correspondence to shed light on the personal triumphs and shortcomings of this preeminent reporter and illuminates the twentieth-century world in which he lived.

In the 1980s, author Jean C. Walsh, a recent widow with four sons, decided to take her ten-year study of Chinese culture and put it to work. She started a consulting business with the objective of helping American business men and women establish connections in China. Throughout the 80s she traveled to China leading trade missions hoping to open markets from Nantung to Beijing. Her story is one of triumph and frustration, as Chinese business practices and American business practices were often at odds with one another. Jean was the bridge that connected the two disparate cultures; both loved by the Chinese people, and respected for her cultural authority by the American business leaders. Jean also took National Geographic-quality photographs on her journeys throughout China, and this coffee table book of her memoirs is an historic document, and a timeless, and evocative testament to one women's strength and savvy in the often enigmatic world of doing business in China.

Thirty leading China experts—ranging from Perry Link, Andrew Nathan and Jonathan Mirsky to W. J. F. Jenner, Lois Wheeler Snow and Morton Abramowitz—recount their first visits to China, recalling their initial observations and impressions. Most first traveled to China when it was still closed to the world, or was just beginning to open. Their subsequent opinions, writings and policies have shaped the Western relationship with China for more than a generation. This is essential reading for those who want to understand the evolution of Western attitudes toward modern China. At the same time, this collection provides a vivid, personal window onto a fascinating period in Chinese history. “To collect the stories of first encounters with China was a brilliant idea. Not only do we get the benefit of many fascinating insights (and hindsights) from a range of foreigners and overseas Chinese, but these deftly edited views from the outside make up one great story: the history of Communist China. More than a history of one damned thing happening after another, however, this is a history of perceptions, lies, myths and revelations, as much about China as her rulers wish it to be seen, as about those who chose to see China, more and sometimes less clearly, over the last half century.” —Ian Buruma, author of Bad Elements “The opening of China to the world, and then of the world to China, is one of modern history’s most consequential stories. That story is told in a fresh, innovative fashion in this insightful collection of personal experiences related by a distinguished collection of historians, diplomats, journalists, political writers and others who ventured behind the Bamboo Curtain early on. Leading the way are disillusioned leftists stunned by the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s Great Leap Forward that they discover. They gradually give way to knowing observers of a tumultuous society determined to become once again a world power. Their accounts form an impressionistic vision of epochal change taking place on the gallop.” —Jim Hoagland, contributing editor, The Washington Post “This is a wistful and absorbing volume, and a fitting remembrance for all of us who once thought that China was going to be easy to study.” —Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China