A long way from crouching lions

Like crouching lions, the large state buildings of Beijing kneel evenly spaced on either side of a broad avenue, for miles on end, each regal and respectful, each beckoning the new era. At one end of this long boulevard stands Zhongnanhai  and Tian'anmen Square, and on the opposite side stands The Forbidden City—a constant reminder that the land is blessed by a long line of culture and meaning that this new/old China still celebrates today.

In contrast to this, I am left holding the empty bag of American culture. Stripped of reassuring depth of meaning by a destructive treatment of cultures that millions of immigrants had brought with them from distant lands—and by the insidious dilution of 98 percent of all monetary value in the US dollar by unrelenting and unconstitutional printing of unbacked paper dollars—we , the lion’s share of us Americans, are left it seems with no shared culture and no money.

How did this happen? How did America qua epitome of the West fade so inexorably and swiftly and how had this event gone so unnoticed?

We can certainly blame in part the age of video games and cell phone texting as their sense of immediacy alone seems to have instantly displaced 100 years of US self-reflection and grounding. Long gone for sure are the heady days of the '60s and '70s and those heartfelt searches for deeper meaning. (I should know, I was there.)

Also partly to blame might well be the threat, since 1992, and the subsequent steps taken to enter one war after another with staccato frequency with a deluge of sharp sound and white noise that so remorselessly drowns out all human dialogue and all collected, measured thought.

But I prefer to ask, as an educational researcher, why US public education has so inexplicably failed to prepare the US population to better understand and evaluate the parallel onrush of electronics and to war? After "No Child Left Behind," "Rush to the Top" and "Common Core" we find that all we hold in common is increased vulnerability to fear and deeper anxiety about a future we don't seem to understand and can't seem to prepare for in any tangible way. What we do not have is the reassurance that comes, or used to come, from having the shared meaning of culture.

In this my first trip to Beijing, I find that people here pay for restaurant bills—and for items in stores—with their mobile phones! Gone from everyday practice are credit cards and no one here even seems to know what a personal check is. Has the world already passed us by, we who are Americans?

In Beijing I don't even see any telephone or cable television lines running overhead along each street—ugly markers that can still seen running over millions of miles of roads that line US cities.

In Beijing the driver of a taxi in which I am riding is asked to wait very long and precious minutes while several hundred children exit from an elementary school and begin their walk home. These children are valued. Would this even be possible in America?

In Beijing I watch while student interns punch away on computer keyboards for hours on end performing tasks—first at a small private movie production studio and later when I visit a medium sized education services company. Nowhere here do I see young adult workers furtively playing video games or texting to friends on hand-held devices, or even gabbing with co-workers. To a person, I watch as each young adult here in Beijing remains hunched over, seriously producing without interruption on her or his computer.

Did I see this when I was in San Francisco? No.

This is a country on the rise, China, isn't it?

Ethnic diversity and all, I see a common work ethic in China and a quiet sense of pride—from the wizened guy sporting a huge smile and cracking jokes while driving a motorcycle-like buggy hauling garbage, to the CEO of a highly successful education consulting company who bothers to drop in and introduce himself to me—to a top international Chinese lawyer who asks me if I might be willing to help promote the kind of leadership training that prepares local young adults to be active in improving US-China relations.

During the past six years of my life in America, I was never asked by anyone to help promote improved US-China relations or even to improve the US democracy itself. This even though I had devoted all of my time to studying how to strengthen US culture and US democracy, and more recently to studying US-Asia relations. In all my years in San Francisco, I now realize I had always been a lifetime away from seeing crouching lions in the US—and experiencing a burgeoning national pride.

So what do I do now?

There is no question in my mind: I must and will set out to help enhance US-China relations from a new vantage point here in Beijing, and hope to high heaven that someone else will have the fortitude, opportunity and wherewithal to do the same in the US.

The author is a winner of the James Clavell Literary Award and a member of Board of Directors of the Himalayan Consensus.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.