By Patricia H. Kushlis
Years ago when I was academic exchanges officer at the US Embassy in Moscow, I was on the overnight train from Moscow to then Leningrad when I met a young man en route to the dining car for an early breakfast. We chatted as we waited for seats. He, of course, immediately realized I was not a native Russian speaker and announced with certitude that I, therefore, must be Polish.
When I told him that I was American, he wouldn’t believe me and demanded that I prove it. His face turned various shades of purple when I showed him my US diplomatic passport. But rather than shy away – and this was still during the depths of the Cold War when contacts with foreigners, especially foreign diplomats from capitalist countries, could be dangerous – he peppered me with questions about my family and life in America and also the US space program. Furthermore, this meeting on the train was far from the only occasion that chance encounters with ordinary citizens like this happened to me during the two years I worked in and traveled around the Soviet Union.
From Russia to China: the power of human interaction
I had almost forgotten about those long ago occurrences until, that is, I visited China on a tour with a small group of Americans in 2003. The tour began in Beijing. It was in early October - right in the middle of major Chinese national holidays when Chinese tourists from the provinces flocked to some of the same tourist sites and cities that our group visited and at the same time. (Photo left: Beijing, Forbidden City, by Patricia H. Kushlis Oct. 4, 2003.)
One of the men in our group was very tall and white haired and when we would stop to take photos or listen to the guide, gaggles of curious young Chinese would gather around us – and zone in on him in particular because, well, they had never seen anyone like him before. And he and we were likely the only Americans they had ever encountered. Like in the Soviet Union in 1978, we were so exotic and the Chinese so insatiably curious that we were almost treated like rock-stars.
If they knew any English they would ask where we were from but, since most did not and we didn’t speak Chinese, they let us know through universal sign language that they would like to have their photographs taken with him. He always smilingly obliged.
As I thought about the US Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo and watched interviews with the young American Chinese-speaking exhibit guides that USC Professor (Jian) Jay Wang has conducted and posted on his website and uploaded onto YouTube, it occurred to me that the inclusion of the guides was perhaps the single most significant element that the US organizers added or could have added – and it wouldn’t have mattered if that decision had been made just nine months or years ago although as program officer Peter Bridges points out in the interview above, more training time for the guides would have been helpful - particularly at the outset.
Personal bridges: the unique human element still counts most
Please understand, it’s the individual American guides personally connecting with the mostly young Chinese visitors that makes the USA Pavilion so unique from all the others. It’s also likely a major reason that this pavilion is the second most popular at the fair outranked only by China’s own. Whoever was involved in making the decision to include the guides – a decision based, I might add, on the young US Russian speaking guides who had made the US government exhibits to the Soviet Union during the Cold War so popular – deserves kudos. The decision to extend the Pavilion's reach "beyond the box" and into the larger community is very American but also likely to have had late USIA Cold War exhibits roots.
True, adding American guides to the USA Pavilion in Shanghai makes just plain good common sense, but so much has been lost in the way of US public diplomacy expertise and smarts since the end of the Cold War, that featuring the human element or the “last three feet” rather than emphasizing a display of objects from a by-gone era or even staffing the exhibit with Chinese guides in an age of avatars and disemboweled communications connections in a country like China was, in my view, a stroke of genius.
After all, most of the people who come to the Shanghai Expo are themselves Chinese although the USA Pavilion has also had a succession of world leaders counted among its visitors. The Chinese tourists come from all over that huge country and for most of them, it is the first time they will have even met an American or someone from the “beautiful land” as the word for America appears in Chinese.
Culture is politics and power
In China, politics is culture. The French consider culture as power. These values are very close in meaning because, after all, power is the bedrock of politics.
Yet, sadly, after all these years, the US government has seemingly not figured this simple equation out. Nevertheless, in a very real sense, the dynamism and creativity of real-life American youth is, in reality, an invisible cultural linchpin in an ever changing society that we as Americans take all too much for granted.
Sure, I would also like the Chinese to be able to see the paintings of New Mexico’s Georgia O’Keeffe, the photography of California’s Ansel Adams and Paul Strand, the abstract expressionism of Max Weber as well as hear the blue grass music of Bela Fleck, the latest compositions by Dave Brubeck and the precision of the Baltimore Symphony’s strings. But up-close and personal interaction with several of the 160 real-life individual representatives of this country’s next generation best and brightest is perhaps the most politically and culturally powerful symbol that America can put on display.
Previous WV posts on the Shanghai Expo:
Shanghai 2010: The US Pavilion and the Future, June 23, 2010
Shanghai Expo 2010: "Better City, Better Life", January 9, 2010.