The Surprising Science of Yawning - The New Yorker
In 1923, Sir Francis Walshe, a British neurologist, noticed something interesting while testing the reflexes of patients who were paralyzed on one side of their bodies. When they yawned, they would spontaneously regain their motor functions. In case after case, the it was as if, for the six or so seconds the yawn lasted, the patients were no longer paralyzed. What’s more, Walshe reported that some of his patients had noticed “that when the fingers are extended and abducted during a yawn, they are able to flex and extend them rapidly, a thing they were unable to do at any other time. Indeed, one man added that he always waited for a yawn so that he might exercise his fingers in this way.”
Walshe concluded that yawning was activated by a primal center of the brain that fell outside conscious control. One’s ability to yawn could thus remain completely intact, even when “cortical control is more or less completely abolished over the musculature of one half of the body.” Yawning, then, was one of our most primitive, fundamental behaviors—a conclusion that echoed Charles Darwin’s observation, in , that “seeing a dog & horse & man yawn, makes me feel how much all animals are built on one structure.”
Yawning is one of the first things we learn to do. “Learn” may not even be quite the right word. Johanna de Vries, a professor of obstetrics at Vrije University Amsterdam, has
that the human fetus yawns during its first trimester in the womb. And, unless we succumb to neurodegenerative disease, yawning is something we keep doing throughout our lives. “You don’t decide to yawn,” Robert Provine, a neuroscientist and the author of “Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond,” told me. “You just do it. You’re playing out a biological program.” We yawn unconsciously and we yawn spontaneously. We can’t yawn on command—and we sometimes can’t stop ourselves from letting out a big yawn, even at the most inopportune times. (Case in point: Sasha Obama’s
during her father’s 2013 Inaugural Address.) But what, precisely, are we accomplishing with all this yawning? If it’s so evolutionarily old, it must be doing something important to have survived. In 400 B.C., Hippocrates speculated that yawning was somehow related to fever: we yawned to expel the bad air that had accumulated inside our bodies, making us ill, much like “the large quantities of steam that escape from cauldrons when water boils.” That intuition has proved remarkably resilient. As recently as , the psychologist Gordon Gallup argued that the yawn is a cooling mechanism for the brain and the body. But the evidence for those theories has been decidedly , and, for now, the physiological function of the yawn remains elusive. As Provine
it, “Yawning may have the dubious distinction of being the least understood, common human behavior.” A more reliable clue to why we yawn may come from when, precisely, we do so. We usually think of yawning as a signal of sleepiness or boredom—one of the reasons Sasha Obama’s yawn seemed so inappropriate. Indeed, fatigue and boredom do reliably elicit yawns. While yawning
actually related to the amount of sleep we get—how physiologically tired we are—or the time of day we choose to , it does seem to grow more intense when we’re feeling subjectively sleepy. In a series of studies conducted in the eighties and nineties, Provine
that people report yawning more frequently when they are feeling tired. They are especially prone to yawning in the hour immediately after waking and the hour preceding their usual bedtimes. Yawning also increases with boredom. In one experiment, Provine’s subjects yawned far more frequently when looking at static than when watching music videos. We also yawn when we’re —a tendency we appear to
with other primates.
Boredom, hunger, fatigue: these are all states in which we may find our attention drifting and our focus becoming more and more difficult to maintain. A yawn, then, may serve as a
for our bodies to perk up,
of making sure we stay alert. When the psychologist Ronald Baenninger, a professor emeritus at Temple University, tested this theory in a series of
coupled with
(he had subjects wear wristbands that monitored physiology and yawning frequency for two weeks straight), he found that yawning is more frequent when stimulation is lacking. In fact, a yawn is usually followed by increased movement and physiological activity, which suggests that some sort of “waking up” has taken place.
“You yawn when you’re obviously not bored,” Provine points out. “Olympic athletes sometimes yawn concert violinists may yawn before playing a concerto.” Provine once had a lab member who had been part of the Army Special Forces. As part of his research, he decided to look at soldiers who were preparing to jump from an airplane for the first time. The incidence of yawning went up just before they made their way to the cabin door. A yawn, Provine believes, may simply signal a change of physiological state: a way to help our mind and body transition from one behavioral state to another&“sleep to wakefulness, wakefulness to sleep, anxiety to calm, boredom to alertness.” So, rather than condemn poor Sasha, we may be better off praising her: in yawning, her body may have been making an effort to re&ngage itself rather than succumb to fatigue or hunger. Yet the idea that we yawn when we’re about to change states is unlikely to be the whole story, for one simple reason: we yawn, most reliably of all, when we see or hear others yawning—whether or not we happen to be feeling particularly drowsy or bored or anxious or hungry ourselves. It’s a phenomenon known as contagious yawning. We also yawn when we so much as think about yawning: in one of Provine’s studies, eighty-eight per cent of people who were instructed to think of yawns yawned themselves within thirty minutes. We yawn when we
about it. “One reason my enthusiasm for studying contagion diminished is because everything causes yawning,” Provine says. (Are you yawning yet?) Why are yawns so contagious? Does the fact that we catch them from one another shed light on their underlying function? One possibility is that contagious yawning serves as a way of showing empathy. While all vertebrate mammals experience spontaneous yawning, only humans and our closest relatives, , seem to experience the contagion effect—a sign that there may be a deeper social meaning to the experience. What’s more, while spontaneous yawning occurs in the womb, contagious yawning
in life, as does empathy. Children younger than five don’t yawn any more often when watching videos of yawns than they would normally.
Proponents of the empathy theory cite evidence from studies of closeness: how close we feel to someone affects how likely we are to yawn when they do. We’re
to catch a yawn from a family member versus a friend, a friend versus an acquaintance, and an acquaintance versus a stranger.
suggests that the effect extends to race: we catch yawns more easily from members of our own race than from members of different races. Chimpanzees and bonobos share this pattern of favoritism. In one , Frans de Waal and Matthew Campbell had two groups of chimpanzees watch a series of videos. In some videos, they saw familiar chimpanzees either yawning or resting, and in others they saw unfamiliar chimpanzees doing the same thing. Both groups yawned more frequently when watching their own group members yawn. A similar pattern was observed in , who yawned more frequently the stronger their social bond with the yawner. Some scientists cite further evidence from studies of subjects with
and : in both cases, contagious yawning is diminished, though spontaneous yawning remains intact.
But yawning a lot doesn’t necessarily make someone particularly empathetic. When Alex Bartholomew and Elizabeth Cirulli
more than three hundred individuals both in the lab and at home, noting how many times they yawned while watching a three-minute yawning video, they found consistent differences among their subjects. It didn’t matter how empathetic or alo some were simply more susceptible to the contagion than others. The only factor that proved relevant, in fact, was age: older people were less likely to catch a yawn than their younger counterparts. Unless we also think the older we get the less empathetic we get, the relationship seems highly suspect. A
of the contagion literature, conducted by the Stanford University psychologists Jennifer Yoon and Claudio Tennie, came to a similar conclusion, finding little evidence that contagion and empathy were in any way causally related.
Rather than empathy, the contagious nature of yawning may be highlighting something very different. “We’re getting insight into the human herd: yawning as a primal form of sociality,” Provine says. Yawning may be, at its root, a mechanism of social signalling. When we yawn, we are communicating with one another. We are sending an external sign of something internal, be it our boredom or our anxiety, our fatigue or our hunger—all moments when we may need a helping hand. In fact, yawning may be the opposite of what we generally think. It’s less likely a signal that you’re tired than a signal that it’s time for everyone around you to act. At its most fundamental, a yawn is a form of communication—one of the most basic mechanisms we have for making ourselves understood to others without words. “It’s often said that behavior doesn’t leave fossils,” Provine says. “But, with yawning, you are looking at a behavioral fossil. You’re getting an insight into how all of behavior once was.”
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Have a login?Images of the United States
&(also on September 13, 2000 in San
Francisco and &on September 11, 2000 in Los
Angeles)& & & &&Summary:&
& & & & When the Chinese
first came to know that there was a country on the other
side of the Pacific Ocean called the United States of
"America" and needed to name it in Chinese, they
chose the phonetically translated "Mei Guo," which
literally means "the beautiful (mei) country
(guo)." A Chinese who happens to hear this name would
have a romantic image of America , even though he or she
might have little knowledge of the country.& & & & &Since
then, Chinese have become familiar with George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, and with the American
Revolution, the Civil War, the Pearl Harbor Incident and the
outstanding service and sacrifice of the American people
during the Second World War. &However, compared to
its images of other Western countries, the Chinese images of
the United States have shown greater complexity and
inconsistency, in light of historical events such as the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Sino-US Shanghai Joint
Communiqu?in l972, and more recent issues.& & & & &It is
helpful to explore the role of the media in Sino-US
relations. &Just as many Americans believe the
Chinese media to be monolithic and subservient to government
dictates, many Chinese believe the U.S. media to be obsessed
with sensationalism and biased against China. &How
can thoughtful Chinese and Americans explore these
perceptual differences and thus build bridges between
peoples in the 21" century"
.Full Text:& & & &America and
Americans: A Chinese PerspectiveZhao
Qizheng& & &
& & & &Minister of the
State Council Information OfficeAmericans who
begin to learn the Chinese language are invariably
astonished to discover that the Chinese translation of the
"United States of America", Meiguo, literally
means "beautiful" (mei) "country" (guo).
The etymology, however, is more complex. Initially the
Chinese people had dozens of names for the large land facing
them from the distant shores of the Pacific Ocean. They
finally settled on Meiguo, the best choice, because not only
does it sound Chinese but also it inspires good feelings in
all Chinese speakers as they first come to know
America.Formal relations between our two
countries can be traced back to August 28, 1784, when the
U.S. merchant ship "Empress of China'', originating in
New York, arrived at Huangpu harbor in Guangzhou in southern
China after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and around the
Cape of Good Hope. Such mercantile exchanges gained momentum
in the middle of the 19th century, thus commencing the long
voyage of understanding between Chinese and Americans that
would become increasingly significant for both peoples.
Lin Zexu, an imperial minister
assigned in 1839 by the Qing Emperor to end the opium trade
and known for his outrage and action against foreigners
trafficking in the debilitating drug, had given the Chinese
people the first detailed introduction of the United States
via a book he compiled about the history and geography of
the world (Sizhouzhi). However, generally speaking, even by
the end of the 19th century, the Chinese people's knowledge
of America, still that vast country situated on the other
side of the planet, remained sketchy. No wonder the first
group of children sent by the Chinese government to study in
the United States in 1872 should have felt both excited and
surprised, such as when they noted that the native American
Indians seemed dressed like figures from the Peking
Starting in the 19th century,
traditional Chinese culture in general and the philosophy of
Confucianism in particular found its way into American
thought, exerting a remarkable influence on American
literature, especially the school of transcendentalism
represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Even Walt Whitman, the founding father of modern American
literature, twice mentioned Confucius in his "Notes and
Fragments." Meanwhile, numerous American
literary works have been translated into Chinese, which
helps us hear the depth, resonance and rich variety of the
American voice. In Walt Whitman's words, we:
& "Hear American singing, the varied carols I
hear...& &Singing with open
mouth their strong melodious songs.''& &Yes, through translation, the Chinese
readers hear Jack London's "Call of the Wild,"
William Faulkner's "Sound and Fury," Hemingway's
bell - although he does not know "For Whom the Bell
Tolls" and hear the leadsman's call on Mississippi
"two fathoms or Mark Twain.'' &This call
became Samuel Clemens' pen name, whose "The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn" and other books are well read in
China. Through these writers, Chinese readers find the
American people optimistic, individualistic, tough-minded,
and practical. This might explain why the complete
translation of "America" in Chinese is mei
(beautiful), li (profitable) and jian
Speaking from personal experiences, a
U.S. sailor on his first visit to China in the 18th century
noticed a unique way through which the Chinese people could
differentiate between Americans and Englishmen, since both
spoke the English language: the Englishmen tend to haggle
over every ounce while doing business with the Chinese, the
Americans are much more generous.
The year 1900
witnessed the oppression of Beijing at the hands of the
Eight-Power Allied Forces (i.e., Britain, the United States,
Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria). At the
height of the brutal aggression, Yuanmingyuan, the royal old
Summer Palace, was ransacked of all its invaluable relics
and treasures and callously burnt to ashes. Later China was
forced to sign a series of humiliating treaties, conceding
defeat, paying tribute, and ceding
territories.
China's rancor ran deepest against
France, Japan and Britain, the three countries that had
launched separate wars against China even before 1900. The
United States of America later returned part of the war
indemnity, therefore China never singled out the United
States as a target of historical bitterness and enduring
resentment.
In fact, it is quite the reverse.
Towards the final days of the Qing Dynasty (),
while exploring ways to salvage their nation, many Chinese
drew references and precedents from the experiences of the
United States. Doctor Sun Yat-sen, the father of the
modern-era Chinese revolution, reiterated on many occasions
the wish to follow the American example. His famed Three
People's Principles -- Nationalism, Democracy and the
People's Livelihood -- were to a large extent based upon
Lincoln's ideal government "of the people, by the
people, for the people." In 1904, Dr. Sun Yat-sen even
formally appealed to the government and the people of the
States for supporting the Chinese revolution to overthrow
the Qing Dynasty, but in vain.
&Mao Zedong, the founder of the Chinese Communist
Party, was also deeply impressed by the deeds of George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln. &As a young man,
Mao read their stories in the book "Biographies of the
World's Greatest People" and he became convinced that
``China also needs such figures.'' Ever since they came to
know George Washington, the Chinese people have respected
him as the father and personification of the United States,
regardless of the vicissitudes in Sino-American
relationship. Abraham Lincoln also enjoys such status in
& &During World War
II, China was transformed into a vast, protracted
battleground where a majority of the Japanese army was
engaged in a ghastly, tortuous war against the Chinese
people, whose unremitting anti-aggression resistance and
unbreakable, unyielding spirit was generously supported by
the American Government and people led by President Franklin
Roosevelt. When the Japanese army cut the supply line
between China and Myanmar in 1943, the U.S. Air Force opened
the famed "Hump" route over the rugged Himalaya
Mountains, which at great cost continued to supply arms
vital for sustaining China's war effort against Japan. Many
American planes, including 500 C-46s, were lost due to the
harsh weather conditions in the foreboding, inaccessible
mountains. Only a few years ago, we were still finding the
remains of these American planes in China's Guangxi Province
and Tibet. &
many as 1,500 American pilots sacrificed their lives for
China's Anti-Japanese War. &Fighting shoulder to
shoulder against the fascists, the Chinese and American
people forged a close and durable friendship, which is still
cherished with fond memories. In Nanjing, the cemeteries of
American pilots are well preserved and honored to this
& &Currently, China is
undertaking the mammoth task of developing its huge western
and great northwestern regions, which naturally reminds
Chinese of the similar American experience almost two
centuries before. It is widely known that the construction
of the railroad provided a launching pad for America's
economic take-off. &However, it is less widely
known that Chinese workers played a large part in this
revolutionary means of transcontinental transportation. In
the cold winters of the 1840s, when other construction teams
had retreated from the Rocky Mountains, the Chinese workers
still forged ahead, bringing the railroad to the wild and
vast western frontiers. Altogether 310,000 Chinese workers
died in this cause. In recognition of their contribution, in
1991 the state government of Illinois erected a monument in
Shanghai with 3,000 rail spikes. On the monument is
inscribed the following message: "Chinese railroad
builders were instrumental in bridging America's western and
eastern coasts and in the ultimate unification of the United
States." The Chinese who see this monument leave with
an impression that Americans are not an ungrateful people
after all.
The Chinese people's goodwill and
gratitude to the United States, which grew with the outbreak
of the Pacific War during World War II (which the Chinese
also call the Anti-Japanese War), reached its peak with the
joint victory over fascism in 1945. The word
"Jeep," a symbol of the American victory that had
become hugely popular, found its way into English-Chinese
dictionaries and became officially accepted Chinese (as
words adopted from foreign languages).
However, this popularity proved
sadly short lived, once Jeeps with Chinese women and
American soldiers were seen rampaging around Chinese
streets. Seemingly in a matter of moments, amity turned into
animosity when an American soldier raped a student from
Beijing University in a square in central Beijing on
Christmas night in 1946. Not long thereafter, the United
States "lost China" when it stood openly with the
corrupt regime of Chiang Kai-shek before and during China's
civil war.
Seldom has the positive progression
of history been free of obstructions, but rarely has such
setbacks happened so quickly and dramatically. Due to
cultural and ideological differences and conflicting
strategic interests, in the five years following their great
mutual victory in 1945, relations between the United States
and China were transmogrified from allies to adversaries. We
became bitter enemies, hurling vitriolic propaganda and
insidious stereotypes at each other and, beginning in 1950,
fighting a brutal, bloody war on the Korean
Peninsula.
This year marks the 50th anniversary
of the outbreak of the Korean War. &In the United
States, there will be a series of commemorative activities.
&A lot of Chinese and American soldiers were killed
in this brutal war, many on frozen battlefields and in
close-in fighting. Most Americans believe that they fought
the Korean War for freedom.
However, Chinese
people think differently. To them, it was the Chinese
soldiers who were fighting to protect their motherland,
which for a hundred years or so had been the object of cruel
foreign oppression and subjected to crushing foreign
domination. Once again, national humiliation appeared
the threat of U.S. aggression seemed
real, for already American warships were patrolling the
Taiwan straits, American forces were approaching the Chinese
border at the Yalu River, and American bombs were being
dropped on Chinese soil. In the Korean War, the casualties
on the Chinese were heavy.
Decades have since
passed, but I do not think either side will easily change
its views about that war. However, not long ago I was told
that a group of Americans was assisting China Central
Television (CCTV) in producing a dramatic television series
on the Korean War (called "The 38th Parallel").
The well-known Chinese director Li Qiankuan believes that
since the United States and China will be partners in peace
in the 21st century, it would be instructive to look back
and reflect upon the one time in the 20th century when they
were enemies at war, and he promised vivid, personal
portrayals of all the protagonists - influential figures and
ordinary soldiers - in all the warring countries. Who fifty
years ago could have imagined such a turn in the historical
course, when former adversaries would join forces for an
artistic work commemorating the war?
following the end of the Korean War, the two sides entered
two decades of suspicion and confrontation, highlighted in
China by the slogan "Down with American Imperialism''
and in the United States by a seal in American citizens'
passports which read ``Invalid for China entry.'' The
prolonged isolation made it difficult for either side to
acquire accurate information of the other, so much so that
before Henry Kissinger's first secret trip to China in 1971,
both President Nixon and Kissinger were genuinely worried
whether they needed to observe China's ancient rituals to
kneel down and kowtow while greeting top
officials.& &However, there
are no such things as "natural enemies" -- no
countries are destined to be eternal antagonists. China and
America are no exceptions, and towards the end of the 1960s
and the beginning of the 1970s, when China was in the
Cultural Revolution and the mood was anti-American, both
countries sensed a compelling need to approach each other
and amend their relationship. In February 1972, President
Nixon embarked upon an ice-breaking trip to China. Braving
Beijing's chilly early spring winds, Nixon, the leader of
the world's most powerful country, shook the hand of Zhou
Enlai, the premier of the world's most populous country. Mao
Zedong received Nixon in his study decked with shelves of
books, where they discussed international relations and
philosophical issues, ushering in a new era in Sino-American
relationship.& &American
songs, including those of the early 20th century (such as
"I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy") as well as those then
popular in the 1970s, were widely sung in China. Speaking of
the euphoria enveloping Sino-American friendship at that
time, I am reminded of its representations in popular
culture. In Shanghai, a well-known cookie store prepared a
huge pagoda-shaped cake, atop the cake were two children,
one Chinese and the other American. &Standing
arm-in-arm, each of them carried a national flag of his
country. &At the base of the cake were four Chinese
characters, painted with jams, which read
"Sino-American Friendship," expressing the common
aspirations of the Chinese people. To cater to the demand of
tea lovers who were very particular about tea sets,
factories even produced cups printed with the national flags
of China and the United States.&
&When China and the United States reestablished
formal diplomatic relations in 1979, it was three years
after the end of "The Cultural Revolution,"
China's decade of internal turmoil when universities were
closed, intellectuals sent to the countryside, and progress
generally arrested. In January and February 1979, just as
Deng Xiaoping was beginning his far-reaching reforms that
would soon transform China, he paid a visit to the United
States, which led to extensive coverage of the distant and
mysterious land by the Chinese media. The famous picture of
Deng donning a cowboy hat was as widely published in China
as it was in the U.S. Ever since then, the Chinese media
have devoted much space in covering American politics,
economics, culture, sports and society, thus helping to
bring an authentic, richly textured picture of America and
Americans to the Chinese public.&
&Americans have long impressed Chinese with their
creativity and can-do spirit. As far back as 1944, upon
returning from a visit to the United States, the well-known
Chinese writer Xiao Qian spoke of his deep impression of
this American trait: "While in nightclubs, the
Americans are just enjoying themselves and thinking of
while at work, they are equally fully
committed. In the irrigated area of Tennessee, I've seen
Americans, including a chief engineer, rolling up their
sleeves and really going at it from the moment they decide
to start an undertaking. This is the spirit we Chinese
should adopt.''
Chinese people also hold high
the scientific and technological achievements made by
Americans, such as the Apollo Project and the high-tech
revolutions of Silicon Valley. But it's not only high tech:
the franchised outlets of McDonald's and Kentucky Fried
Chicken are easily spotted in Chinese cities, and a
university education in the United States is the dream of
many Chinese college students. According to statistics of
China's educational departments, the number of Chinese
students studying in the U.S. has reached 120,000 since
1978, while the number of American students studying in
China exceeds 10,000.
&Still, we have to acknowledge that the development
of Sino-American relations is not as smooth as we would
like, since notwithstanding the overwhelming benefits of
harmonious cooperation, some serious stumbling blocks do
exist between the two countries, such as the trade
imbalance, the Dalai Lama, the Taiwan issue, and human
rights. Though occasionally the Chinese media do carry
stories critical of America's China policy, by and large
they are rather balanced in reporting the political,
economic, social, and cultural situation in the U.S,
including progress and achievements in diverse areas.
& &In sharp
contrast and much to their dismay, many Chinese find that
American media reports about China are often scanty,
simplistic, inaccurate and prejudicial. As a result,
misunderstandings persist, as can be evidenced by the recent
story of a chief executive of a radio station in Washington
D.C., who during his visit to China Radio International
carried with him large
apparently he
was worried that China's edible food supply remained a
serious problem. Of course, this is an
& &Some people go
to the other extreme and overestimate, far out of
proportion, the comprehensive national strength of China,
inflating China's military capabilities and ambitions, an
exaggeration that would seem to justify their so-called
"China Threat" theories and
"containment" prescriptions.
&Unproductively, such misguided and injudicious
opinions have helped create an unfriendly atmosphere for
China in the United States and around the world.
&The distressful result not only distorts the
American people's perception of China, but also, in an
escalating cycle of charge and countercharge, contaminates
the Chinese people's perception of America.
& &Indeed many
Chinese who grew up after 1972 have since relinquished their
original fondness of the U.S. Many Chinese, especially the
youth whose social and political values may be close to
those of Americans, cannot help but raise strings of
disconcerting questions: Why is the mainstream U.S. media
against China? Why do they oversimplify the situation in
China and thus misinform the American public? Why does the
U.S. keep churning out a report each year reprimanding
developing countries, including China, over conditions of
human rights? Why should the U.S. raise anti-China
resolutions in the annual United Nation's human rights
conference? Why does the U.S. think that its system is the
best for every country? Why does the U.S. keep interfering
with China's internal affairs? Why does the U.S. expand its
arms sales to Taiwan every year? Will the U.S. ever become a
true friend of China?
&These questions might explain why in 1996 a few
young Chinese intellectuals wrote a widely publicized book,
"The China That Can Say No." &Such
pent-up sentiments found a natural outlet in 1999, when the
U.S.-led NATO forces bombed the Chinese Embassy in
Yugoslavia. The anger and indignation, apparent in the
large-scale demonstrations (composed largely of young
people), underscored the Chinese people's strong patriotic
& &In reflection,
it is clear to me that despite its ups and downs, and some
contentious and continuing issues, the direction of
Sino-American relationship is to be increasingly
interconnected, increasingly cooperative, and increasingly
friendly. It must be so. In fact, for the welfare of both
China and America, it cannot be otherwise. There is no
single reason why our two countries should not come together
and work together. If there are problems that seem
intractable, they are all man-made and can be made
malleable. &In my opinion, the genuine, deep-rooted
friendship between our two peoples should grow tall and last
forever, like the giant redwood trees thriving in the Rocky
Mountains. I have recently come across a brand of cigarettes
in China named after the Sequoia, the giant redwood. I like
the symbolism, though not necessarily the cigarette.
China is dedicated to promoting
Sino-American friendship. For example, several Chinese film
studios and TV stations are working on motion pictures and
television series with this core theme. For example, the
film "Grief Over the Yellow River," a big box
office winner in China, features American pilots fighting
the Japanese on Chinese soil. By the way, Chinese people are
quite fond of American movies. The beautiful, tragic love
story in Titanic, and the manhood and patriotism in
"The Patriot," have left deep impressions on
Chinese audiences. The animated cartoon "Mulan"
produced by Disney basing on a Chinese story has been a
favorite of Chinese kids.
&The Chinese are a rational and mature people. They
understand that with the multi-polarization of world
politics and the rush of economic globalization, all
countries will become increasingly interdependent in
political, economic, social and cultural matters. It is an
undisputed fact that the United States is the most powerful
industrialized country, and that China is the most populous
developing nation. Though differences exist in ideologies,
strategic interests and cultural traditions, our two nations
have established an effective, constructive and wide-ranging
partnership that recognizes and furthers fundamental
interests in many areas. Let's consider the categories and
our common goals: In world politics, sovereignty and
in global economics, gr in
national societies,
in science and
technology, increasing knowledge and in
culture, mutual appreciation of excellence and diversity.
& &Such interests
will be advanced only if China and America both strive for a
win- however, neither shall benefit if
either turns against the other. Indeed, our enhanced
understanding and cooperation will extend beyond ourselves
and become catalytic for promoting world peace and enhancing
world prosperity. Standing in this opening year of the new
century, we feel the sober obligation to strengthen
Sino-American relationship, if only to benefit future
generations, no one has any right whatsoever to undermine,
frustrate or thwart it.
&The great majority of the Chinese people back
President Jiang Zemin's stance that China and the United
States should enhance mutual understanding, broaden common
ground, develop cooperation and build a future together.
They also agree with President Clinton that the 21st century
will witness the blossoming of Sino-American collaboration
in all areas of human endeavor.
&I know that I have chosen a tough topic. I do not
intend to dwell on the history of Sino-American relations,
as that should be
nor do I intend to
elaborate on contemporary Sino-American relations, as that
should be the task of diplomats. All I wish to convey
concerns ordinary Chinese people's perception about America
and Americans. These perceptions are alternatively (or
simultaneously) complex, mixed, ambiguous, volatile, and
even contradictory. However, as an optimist, I hope that my
words convey the idea that the Chinese people, in their
fondest hopes and best wishes, desire America to truly be a
beautiful country, not a beautiful imperial power.
& &Today I've
presented this speech "America and Americans: A Chinese
Perspective'' in the context of our long-desired exhibition
of Chinese culture in the United States. It is my hope that
next year there will be a similar showcase "Experience
American culture in China", so I can hear a speech
"China and the Chinese: An American Perspective",
probably by someone from among you ladies and gentlemen.
&& &I look
forward to meeting you in China. Thank you.
&Curriculum Vitae of Mr. Zhao
Qizheng& & & &
&Born in &Beijing in January 1940, Mr.
Zhao Qizheng &spent his younger years in northern
China. &He holds a degree in nuclear physics from
the Science and Technology University of China.
&Mr. Zhao is Minister of the State Council
Information Office since 1998.& &
& & &He started his career as a
nuclear physicist and from
he worked at the Second
Designing Institute of the Ministry of Nuclear Industries.
he served as deputy chief of
designing section of the Shanghai Broadcast Equipment Plant,
Shanghai Space Administration, and then became Deputy
Director for the plant. &His technical title was
senior research fellow, granted at the same ranking as
advanced engineer or university professor&
& & &Mr. Zhao entered his
political life being a government functionary since 1984,
and since then his career path is: , Deputy Party
Secretary in charge of the industrial sectors in Shanghai
and then Deputy Director General of the Municipal Personnel
Department (M.P.D.); 1986 - 1991, member of the Standing
Committee of Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Director
General of M.P.D.; In 1991, he was elected Vice Mayor of
Shanghai Municipality, and since 1993 concurrently President
of the Management Committee of Pudong, the newly developing
area of Shanghai.
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