As I look out my "window pane," my image and preconceptions of China are limited and vague. In order to understand and experience what it is that China represents I believe it is necessary to push aside my current views and open that window to witness China's full potential. Often times my view is blurred by the images of China I have seen as a child and young adult. .
My personal windowpane is one of vagueness and preconceptions. These vague preconceptions are due to the small encounters I have experienced with China as a youth in America. The many faint scratches are small and numerous, often times hard to see with the naked eye. Most of these scratches are from the folklore that I have heard as a child about the fascinating and strange world across the ocean. These include things and people such as Marco Polo, Confuscious, The Great Wall, and other ancient tales that come from thousands of miles away to bring us a slightly blurred vision of a far off land. .
Deeper scratches, or marks, that have influenced my visions of China are that of a communist or Red China. As a young child, in an America that was just getting out of the Cold War with Russia, I saw images of China on the news and in the paper that were of a country that was militaristic and evilly communist. These young images also show a picture of an old man on signs and pictures throughout the country with people parading and chanting about him around the streets. Even in the classroom we learned that Russia was now our friend yet China was still an evil communist country to be feared and hated. There were also tales of young babies being murdered by the government because they were not the proper sex or they were not the first-born child. Through all of this I have seen the changes of a new China in recent years that create marks of a free and more democratic country. All of these scratches and marks create a window that is foggy, red, and hard to look through.
