I’ve been to China three times since 2008, and every time I go, I am astonished by the amount of development that has occurred since the last time I was there.  Shanghai now seems to stretch on and on, with clusters of ten or so massive high-rise residences every few miles or so.  Within biking distance of Tiananmen Square are two high-end shopping malls that look awesome and one of the biggest Louis Vuitton stores I’ve ever seen (opened in 2013).  Even small (Tier 3) cities can have one million people (in comparison, a city like Boston, Massachusetts, which I don’t consider “small,” has less than 700,000 people).  And the amount of infrastructure that has been developed in the last ten years to connect all 665 Chinese cities, including new highways and bullet trains that go around 200 miles per hour, is mindboggling.

But perhaps even more mindboggling is that we here in the United States weren’t able to witness the development of modern China until 1972, when Richard Nixon made his historic visit that re-opened relations between the two countries after 25 years of separation (a visit that itself was triggered a year earlier by a table tennis match between U.S. and Chinese players that, in a stroke of naming genius, came to be known as “Ping-Pong Diplomacy”).  Nixon is more often remembered for Watergate and his resulting resignation as President, which (rightly or wrongly, and to be honest, I move closer towards wrongly as I see what more current Presidents are able to get away with) obscures an incredibly important achievement.  Nixon met with Chairman Mao only for an hour, but that meeting, as well as the remainder of Nixon’s visit, laid the groundwork for the ever increasing exchanges between the two countries.  (Parenthetically, the visit also gave us pandas, raising the cuteness factor at American zoos exponentially.  As recounted in the fantastic book Nixon and Mao:  The Week That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan, “Chao En-lai, who was smoking Chinese cigarettes, turned to Mrs. Nixon and gestured to the picture of two pandas on the package.  ‘We will give you two,’ he said.  According to Chinese sources, Mrs. Nixon screamed with joy.”)

Personally, I can’t imagine a world where East hasn’t met West … where on a daily basis I don’t use something that is made in China, and someone in China doesn’t use something that was developed in the United States.  Chinese culture has had an impact on our own, and vice versa … from philosophy to economics to technology to food and even to fashion.  Some of my prettiest dresses are influenced by classic Chinese designs, like this Burberry Prorsum dress I got from MatchesFashion (www.matchesfashion.com) with floral panels and a Mandarin-style collar.  In a similar vein, when I was in Beijing, I was able to get a Drybar-quality blowout with as much beachy volume as if I was in California.

The United States and China have had a complex history, but that is to be expected.  As the Chinese proverb says, “A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.”