People's Diplomacy in Sino-US Relations: Collecting Stories for "China Tripping"

Relations between the Chinese and American people are rich, and the cultural bonds run through the fabric of both countries. Tensions have recently increased in the relationship between Washington and Beijing. Mainly as a result of trade disputes, the governments of the United States and the People’s Republic have been brought to one of the most bitter moments in recent memory.

But many observers believe that the ties between the people of both countries should not be equated with the vicissitudes of the two political powers featured in these troubling headlines. Beyond the trade talks and summits, a “people’s diplomacy” has revealed a long-standing warm and mutually curious relationship between American and Chinese people. These everyday encounters are the central theme of a new book that features recollections by 33 American authors about their experiences in China.Three years ago, on the eve of the 2016 election, I met with two friends and colleagues to begin developing plans for what would become this new book, China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People’s Republic. Paul Pickowicz had begun developing ideas for the project, and Perry Link and I joined him and began planning a volume that would do something that we hadn’t seen, and something that would celebrate the warmth and curiosity between the Chinese and American people at a personal and everyday level.

The book that resulted is a collection of anecdotes and vignettes written by Americans who spent much of their lives in China. We asked a group of scholars, businesspeople, and journalists to do the impossible, and distill a lifetime of experience living and working in China to a batch of stories, sometimes captured in just a few paragraphs. Some of the stories are amusing and even frivolous, others are sobering and moving, but they are all telling anecdotes that reveal as much about the authors as they do about the people they encountered.

China Tripping naturally refers to “trips” taken to China by the 33 authors included in the book, but it also refers to the ways in which the authors all “tripped” or stumbled through their own learning. The missteps, foibles, and naivete of the authors are on full display in most of the pieces. A third meaning in the title evokes the ways in which many of the authors were infatuated and even intoxicated with China, “tripping” on the thrill of being in the country and beholding all of the vibrancy of the people and the culture.

I had heard some of these anecdotes long before they were written down, during unguarded chats with the authors about something embarrassing or shocking that they had experienced in China, or some other memorable experience. Asking authors to share these kinds of moments was truly asking them to let their hair down as journalists, businesspeople, or scholars. These candid moments usually capture some revelation that exposes as much about the author’s mistakes as it does about China. The titles hint at the range captured in the pieces, from the high drama of Morris Rossabi’s “Death of a Tourist” (1979), to an intimate slice-of-life piece like James Hargett’s “A Night with the Post Office Guys” (1979); from the confessional tone of Suzanne Cahill’s “The Stupidest Thing I Did in China” (1980), to the quirky coincidences of Maggie Greene’s “Darth Vader and the Triceratops” (2014).

The contributions range from 1971 to the eve of publication, with veteran scholars and journalists as well as younger voices who have benefited from the paths made by those who came before. Some vignettes emphasize the profound diversity of views and experiences in China, from Shandong to Xinjiang, and from Tibet to Hainan. The authors move through their own misconceptions of China, and find their eyes opened and their horizons broadened. The volume, like the experiences of the authors, aims to move past stereotypes or hasty generalizations. The resulting effect is hopefully the opening of a doorway to further exploration, as captured in the cover photograph by artist, Li Huai of the University of California, San Diego Visual Arts Department, whose calligraphy is also featured inside the book.The authors featured in the book comprise a remarkable team of scholars, journalists, and businesspeople, beginning of course with Pickowicz and Link. Pickowicz is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Chinese Studies of the University of California, San Diego, where he worked closely with Joseph Esherick, holder of the Hwei-chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies. A vignette by Esherick is also featured in the volume. Perry Link is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, and Chancellorial Chair for Innovation in Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of California, Riverside. Link and Pickowicz have a record of excellence working together, based in part on their previous books for Rowman and Littlefield, including Restless China (2013) and Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society (2001), both of which featured Richard P. Madsen as co-editor with them. Madsen’s recollections are also included in China Tripping.

We hope that readers enjoy these vicarious encounters. We also hope to develop a kind of companion volume to this book, one that captures the experiences of scholars and journalists from China who travel to America, and the everyday encounters that they experience here. This “America Tripping” book would doubtless reveal much to both Chinese and American readers about these authentic and everyday encounters. I once heard that if you visit a country for a week, you might feel that you’re ready to write a book about the place and its people. If you stay there for a month, maybe you’ll just want to write a short article. And if you stay for a year or more, you’ll be so overwhelmed with insights and encounters, that you might think twice about whether you have anything much to say at all. The writings featured here are thus duly short, intended to capture just a snapshot, or a brief moment of realization and transformation.

When we started to plan this book, we knew that people in our line of work are not easily corralled into a short piece of writing. But the average piece turned out to be just 1000 words. These moments leapt from the memories of our friends and colleagues, eager to be shared in vivid detail, as shining moments of revelation, growth, and humanity.

About the Author Jeremy A. Murray is Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino. He teaches Chinese history and his research focuses on Hainan island. He has written and edited several books, most recently China Tripping: Encountering the Everyday in the People's Republic (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), as well as China’s Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926-1956 (SUNY Press, 2017). He can be reached at jmurray@csusb.edu