ROB’S CHINA MOJO Day 14: One World One Dream – Returning Home to Vermont (Monday, June 15, 2009)

The sign in the Beijing International Airport, featuring a two-tiered Chinese temple against a brilliant red background, reads in two languages:

One World One Dream

The phrase was coined for the Beijing 2008 summer Olympics – last year’s global coming-out party for the Middle Kingdom, and Beijing is the symbolic city of 21st century China: sleek, sophisticated, modern, cosmopolitan, on one hand, but deeply rooted to the broad sweep of thousands of years of Chinese history and culture, on the other.

Before we left the hotel this morning, I managed one last run through the street behind the Malls at Oriental Plaza, past a lone man hanging his wet laundry, through a hutong and into my new favorite urban garden, a modest rectangular two-block-long sequestered space that snugs up against the Forbidden City.

I am feeling many things today.

Most of all, I feel a sense of gratitude for this remarkable two week experience.

I feel compelled to issue a big SHOUT OUT to everyone who has made this trip possible.

First to my family – Kate, Anneka, and Theron, and my business partners at Vermont Yak Company – for holding down the fort while I was gone. I love you all, and am so grateful for your support of this trip.

To my Champlain College dean, Jeff Rutenbeck, and my able globe-trotting colleague Gary Scudder, both of whom believed in this trip and supported it from the get go, as well as to my fierce friend and Champlain colleague Sara Cohen, whose energy is unmatched.

And on our trip:

OFL (Our Fearless Leader) Steve Wilmarth, whose passion for and commitment to improving understandings between China and the United States is inspiring.

Donna DeGennaro, my professional colleague at UMass Boston whose knowledge of educational technology far surpasses my own, and whom I am now fortunate enough to call a friend.

Miguel Vazquez, sophomore at Babson College, whose quiet maturity, organizational skills, tech-savvy know-how, and ability to read maps saved us on more than one occasion.

And CC China Mojo – Jenica, Kat, Maryse, and Kristen – who had the courage to believe in this trip and make it happen, each in her own way. I am so pleased that each of you decided to make the journey, and I am honored to have an opportunity to get to know each of you a bit better. Be sure to tell your stories, early and often, in the months and years ahead. Capable Web 2.0 blogmistresses, all of you are – I look forward to reading your reflections on our adventures.

And I reserve special gratitude to our new Chinese friends, especially Liu Jinqui at the foreign affairs office, for approving our visas; Zhang Ya Juan, for her good humor, patience, and remarkable translating skills (we’ll see you in Vermont come the fall!); and the entire Xu family, whose generosity, warmth, and hospitality proved awe-inspiring. May we one day soon have the chance to return the favor when you visit Vermont.

One World One Dream.

It is a compelling phrase, and recent research indicates that Chinese and Americans might be more alike than we think.

In a December 2008 Journal of Chinese Political Science article with the cumbersome title “Chinese Political Attitudes and Values in Comparative Context: Cautionary Remarks on Cultural Attributions” (republished in the Spring 2009 Wilson Quarterly), researcher Steve Chan points out that most cultural characteristics that we in the West consider “typically Chinese” – nationalistic, authoritarian, conformist, deferential – fly in the face of preliminary polling data in the new China that indicates that Chinese don’t conform to these traits as much as we in the West think they do.

In fact, Chu concludes, “Chinese people expressed the opposite of conventional wisdom on many of the most important issues of the day.”

For example, only 26% of Chinese said they were proud of their nationality, compared with 72% of Americans; 19% of Chinese expressed support for “strong leaders who do not have to bother with parliaments or elections,” compared with 30 % of Americans; and 15% of Chinese said that “obedience” was an important attribute, as compared with 32% of those Americans surveyed. Chan concludes that differences between East and West “were exaggerated in the beginning and have lessened over time.” The lesson? “Using cultural proclivities to explain contemporary events may be a mistake – even if we judge the proclivities correctly.”

One World One Dream.

And yet…

Behind this sexy slogan, of course, we are different worlds with different if converging histories, who often don’t fully understand or appreciate each other’s dreams.

While here in China, we’ve down some remarkable things. Via plane, bus, train, car, foot, and yes, rickshaw, we’ve visited with thousands of ancient terra cotta warriors and explored the burial sites of ancient kings; climbed two Great Walls (Xian and Mu Tian Yu); climbed Herlan mountain; walked through the Forbidden City and across Tiananmen Square (several times); visited with hundreds of students, teachers, and ordinary Chinese people across close to 3,000 miles of territory, from Beijing to Xining and back again; expanded our culinary sensibilities by eating regional Han, Hui, Uighar, Mongol, Tibetan and Cantonese food; consumed more baiju (rice wine) than we ever thought possible (Gom Bai!); and shopped ‘til we dropped, haggling with our newfound communication skills.

And we’ve only just begun to share our stories through photographs, videotape Flips blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.

And at the end of the day, that’s what it is about.

Sharing our stories, and the new relationships we’ve developed along the way.

A recent report published by a 20 member committee led by former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and U.S. foreign policy expert Joseph Nye advocates that the United States create and subsidize a “US-China education fund” to foster exchanges between high school students in both countries. As a result, “China experts” and “US experts” could better assist each country in deepening mutual understandings.

The report goes on to point that Americans know far less about China than Chinese know about Americans – more than 300 million Chinese, for example, now speak English, compared with the only hundreds of thousands of Americans who speak Chinese, and far more Chinese profess a liking for the United States (60%, versus 26% who say they don’t like the U.S.), then Americans profess a liking for China (52%, versus a whopping 45% who dislike China.)

So, we’ve got some good work ahead of us, and trips like this are a good first step.

Extended exchanges, and mutual language learning and collaboration, to each country would certainly help.

In the end, for me, it comes back to the stories of individual Chinese people who are working to make their own personal and professional dreams more real, and in the process, changing China for the better. I think of Professor Tian, and Janet, and the Xus, and Liu Jinqui, and Zhang Ya Juan, and Mei, and all the other folks we’ve met along the way, each with an extraordinary story to tell. “I am just anordinary person,” I heard many of them insist in our conversations, a very Chinese way of thinking.

To which I say, as a westerner with my own proclivities:

Not so.

You are extraordinary.

You are powerful beyond measure (as Nelson Mandela once observed) and your story matters.

Each of our stories matter.

This is where I place my hope for the future.

I hope that all of us on this trip will contribute to this collective story-telling process.

And now, some time to rest is in order.

My favorite “outbuilding” (read: big temple) in the Forbidden City was “the room of doing nothing,” where the Emperor would go to, well, chill.

I think everyone needs such a room.

For two weeks, we’ve been “China Mojo a’go go.”

One World One Dream.

Now I’ll slow down, do nothing, and reflect on this vision.

For the moment.

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