[Chinese language title: Deng Shang Bi An (Setting Foot on the Opposite Shore)]
by David J. Firestein and Zhang Aixue
Published April, 1997 by Dongfang Chubanshe [Oriental Press], 166 Chaoyang Dajie, Beijing 100706 CHINA] ISBN 7-5060-0906-4/G 158
In Pacific Reflections, a bilingual collection of essays, USIS Beijing officer David Firestein and Beijing Youth Daily journalist (and 1994 International Visitor Program veteran) Zhang Aixue present a collection of essays previously published in the pages of Beijing Youth Daily, a newspaper with a circulation of over one million. International cultural exchange is here crystallized in book form. Firestein reflects upon his experiences of China since his first visit in 1984, six months as a Peking University student during the eventful Spring of 1989 and then several years residing in Beijing as a U.S. diplomat. Zhang describes her impressions of American society during her month long visit to the United States in 1994 as part of the United States Information Agency’s International Visitor Program in 1994. The two present a series of three to four page snapshots of life in China and in the United States. Rich in metaphors to stir your mental juices, the essays point out aspects of everyday life in China and America that help us think about just what are the defining characteristics of civil society in the two countries.
Journalist Zhang Aixue notes how much Americans value privacy while in China an insistence upon privacy sometimes makes people think one has a dark secret to hide. Yet President Clinton has no privacy. Vendors outside the White House use President Clinton’s cut-out cardboard image to earn money from tourists. A movie star has the legal right to prevent other people from using the star’s image. But not President Clinton. Laws in America which mandate public access for the handicapped and prevent discrimination against them in employment are a wonderful thing, observes Zhang.
In his first essay, David Firestein asks why do are all Chinese schools surrounded by walls? In another why do Chinese make such a great distinction between the inner and the outer, the domestic and the foreign. In his series of essays, Firestein also examines his experiences in doing favors for friends and helping people in trouble. Firestein remarks how the large increase in extramarital affairs and divorce are signs of just how fast Chinese society has changed over the last five signs of just how fast Chinese society has changed over the last five years. Chinese have a much better understanding of the outside world and no longer stare at foreigners as they did in the mid 1980s. Foreign students who came to study in the 1980s entered the Chinese world. Now, Firestein reflects sadly, some spend all their time in bars and restaurants far away from the lives of most Chinese. Seeing the test of friendship is the willingness to criticize in a constructive matter, Firestein examines in several essays aspects of China which he dislikes such as the failure of most Chinese people to stand up for their rights as consumers, littering, the widespread practice of journalists being paid to attend press conferences, and courtesy on the telephone.
In China today there is a great thirst for information about the outside world and particularly about the United States. The “I went to America and here is what I saw” book has already become a literary genre well-represented in Chinese bookshops, including Qian Ning’s remarkable book “Liuxue Meiguo” [Studying in America]. Pacific Reflections meets this demand but talks about very deep issues tied to civil society that underly many a Sino-American hot button issue.
The extraordinary pace of social and political change in China often goes on unnoticed by foreigners since much occurs beneath the surface. Some Chinese like to say “the red flag still waves, but the people standing behind the flag have changed completely”. Yesterday I went to the bookstore and bought a Chinese-language translation of Karl Popper’s ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’ and two other books by U.S. scholars on American constitutional law. While Pacific Reflections does not speak in the language of human rights, rule by law, environmental protection or even fair treatment for foreign products and WTO accession, it captures something of the ongoing construction of civil society in China. The widening space for the rule of law and human rights depends upon the construction of civil society -- the thread that runs through it all.
Remarkable as Pacific Reflections is, I have to offer some criticism. The book is too expensive. At 22 renminbi is about 50 percent higher than the price I usually pay (15 RMB) for paperbacks. The message is important, so I think that at the expense of cutting out eight pages of color pictures which preface the book and a less expensive cover design, the price of the book could have been brought down to a more popular price. At its selling price, the book is not extraordinarily expensive, but it deserves to reach the widest possible audience.
Firestein not only discusses what he likes about China, but also offers some frank views on some of the less attractive aspects of Chinese society. Zhang, however, slides gracefully over shortcomings in U.S. society to present a very positive, perhaps even unbalanced, view of U.S. society. In this Sino-American differences in the approach the authors take to criticism, we can see a deep level Pacific Reflection. This particular reflection (or refraction) left me feeling the book was a bit unbalanced. Unfortunately, these days many Chinese readers, naturally proud of their country in a time of rapid changes that would give anyone anomie, are quick to imagine slights or assumed superiority in the attitude of Americans. And in no American more than one who discusses Chinese dirty laundry. In discussing Chinese shortcomings, I always try to pair it with an American shortcoming so as not to hurt the feelings of Chinese friends. After all, nobody is perfect, particularly one such as myself born so far beyond the Great Wall... .
Although David Firestein wrote these essays on his own time and published them (with post approval) privately, his book makes me realize how very important is the task of being ‘voices of America’ for all of us. Our USIA colleagues are an underappreciated lot. I hope that as Firestein and Zhang’s book flows into the United States, more people will realize the great contribution USIA/USIS, and programs such as the International Visitor Program, makes to the United States. Interestingly enough, since David Firestein did this on his own time, his book is one of the few by USIS officers that can be sold freely in the United States since US law protects Americans, but not foreigners, from U.S. government propaganda. A strange circumstance that might well give birth to yet another Pacific Reflection.
Pacific Reflections puts faces on the toiling masses by pointing out the similarities which unite as well as the differences which divide Chinese and Americans. Seeing the richness of Chinese society through the eyes of Firestein and Zhang makes it harder to think simply of “us” and “them”. Pacific Reflections/Setting Foot on the Opposite Shore (the Chinese title is much better!) gives us a moving portrait of Chinese civil society under construction and a reminder than the highest walls are the ones we build in our own minds.