Up close and personal

Nuanced views

Beyond organized exchange programs, the personal experiences of Americans living and traveling across the country show how the story of China-US friendship is written through everyday encounters, offering a deep, nuanced view of life in different parts of China.

In Jinzhai county, Anhui province, 35-year-old Pedro Assad was surprised to find that not understanding the local dialect did little to discourage people from talking to him. Before being lifted out of poverty, the county, which lies at the heart of the Dabie Mountains on the borders of Anhui, Henan and Hubei provinces, was among the country's most-impoverished counties.

Assad said when he visited villages, locals would talk to him for long periods. "The biggest culture shock for me was how much people would want to talk with me," he said.

Before his first visit to China, Assad, a former accountant from Oregon in the US, said what he knew about the country was mainly through Chinese friends and media coverage.

"I think the images of China in the US are a strange mix of old and new," he told China Daily.

"On one hand, many of the images Americans associate with China date back to the first three or four decades after the founding of the People's Republic of China, when the country was very different from what it is today.

"On the other hand, over the past three years, more foreign visitors have come to China and shared their experiences on social media, offering a more contemporary view of the country."

For Assad, neither the US news coverage nor social media fully captured the country or its people's everyday lives.

In 2024, driven by curiosity, Assad visited several countries, including Brazil and Japan, and spent a week in China. "We thought it was important to get to know parts of the world that Americans were less informed about," he said.

Assad said after visiting China, "My spouse and I found that we absolutely loved it."

This fondness for the country led him to move to China in 2025 and work as an English teacher in Beijing, where his understanding deepened through encounters in daily life.

One of Assad's early experiences of the kindness of strangers came on a busy summer weekend in Beijing. While trying to buy a ticket to the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, he made a mistake that held up the queue. As he tried to figure out what had gone wrong, a stranger who spoke English stepped forward to help, translate, and guide him to a museum staff member.

"I had not asked for help," he recalled. "They took the initiative to translate for me, making sure I could enter smoothly and that everything was settled."