Everything I Understand about America I Learned in Chinese Proverbs

You can take the girl out of the country, but not the country out of the girl, the English saying goes. For Wendy Liu, a former Chinese citizen who has called the U.S. home for the last twenty years, it has been more a case of You can take the girl out of China, but not Chinese proverbs out of the girl. In Everything I Understand about America I Learned in Chinese Proverbs, Wendy Liu tells her experiences and views of America its life, issues, politics, and China relations with a Chinese angle. Following a dispute over free speech, for instance, she recalled the Chinese proverb A great person s heart is big enough to pole a boat in and realized that a big heart was what everyone needed to tolerate differences in America. Observing controversies between the U.S. and China, she felt that with America s complex relationship with the Middle Kingdom, it would be helpful if Americans were not sometimes seeing trees only, but not the forest, another Chinese proverb. Wendy Liu believes that by sharing her understanding of America, she is contributing to the overall understanding of America as well as that of U.S.-China relations.