In 2008, the US-made animated film Kung Fu Panda generated big box office numbers across China. The movie skillfully blended the Chinese elements of kung fu and the panda with US-style animated story-telling — the Chinese audience responded enthusiastically and in huge numbers. The film is strongly emblematic of today’s state of flourishing cultural exchange between the two nations, a momentum of goodwill that began to build three decades ago.

In Rome, actors Fabio Volo and Jack Black at a promotion for Kung Fu Panda.

Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps on the Great Wall during a rainfall. by Guang Niu/CFP

China’s first KFC restaurant opened on Qianmen Street, Beijing, in the mid-1980s. CFP

November 16, 2001: Eileen Ng, a design student at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, displays a paper Barbie doll. REUTERS/Kin Cheung

Famed Chinese NBA player, Yao Ming. by Qi Heng/Xinhua

2007: An international visitor garbed for a practice performance of traditional Sichuan Opera in Chengdu. by Zhu Jianguo/CFP

March 10, 2006: A satisfied Chinese customer departs a Warner Brothers store in Shanghai. REUTERS/Aly Song

July 10, 2007: The US film Transformers screened at Beijing’s Sun Dong An Cinema attracts numerous youngsters. by Dai Bing/CFP

May 17, 2007: As viewed by a student, one of 100 visiting Yale University teachers and students, the Imperial Palace in Beijing. by Mai Tian/CFP

On January 1, 1979, the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America officially commenced normalized diplomatic relations. A few weeks later, on January 28, Deng Xiaoping, then vice premier of the State Council of China, visited the US, during his nation’s traditional Spring Festival period. He was the first top Chinese leader to visit the US since the founding of the PRC.

Although the two nations broke the diplomatic ice, in the early days an ideological gap still existed. A Cold War way of thinking hindered the peoples of the two countries in efforts of bilateral communication. Both the Chinese and US leaders worked to remedy the situation.

Besides diplomatic meetings, on the agenda of Deng’s US trip were also informal activities. A grand gathering hosted by President Jimmy Carter at the Kennedy Center on the night of January 29 was the highlight of Deng’s trip to Washington, D.C.

Yuan Xianlu and Jiang Yuanchun, senior journalists with People’s Daily, reported in their editorial account An Exciting Night: “All performances, no matter the opera Eubie, the ballets Pasture Landscape and Basketball Game or folk-rock song Rocky Mountain High, boast a strong ethnic flavor and are rich in pastoral ambience. Even foreigners like us can easily understand and be touched.”

The climatic performance of the evening was I Love Tian’anmen in Beijing, as sung in mandarin by about 200 American children. After the performance, Deng and his wife, Zhuo Lin, stepped onto the stage to give a warm hug and kiss to these children. US President Jimmy Carter described the scene in his diary: “There was a genuine sense of emotion when he [Deng] put his arms around the American performers, particularly little children who had sung a Chinese song … Deng and his wife genuinely seemed to like people, and he was really a hit with the audience present and also the television audience.”

In fact, the cultural exchange between China and the US began before they officially commenced diplomatic relations. On February 21, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon visited Beijing, breaking the diplomatic ice between the two nations. During the visit, the Chinese government presented as gifts to the American people two giant pandas, Lingling and Xingxing. The panda couple’s new home would be the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Soon after President Nixon’s China visit, a troupe of Chinese acrobats served as the first group of Chinese cultural ambassadors to the US. Many average Americans got to know China through their stunning acrobatic performances, as well as through the historic period of “Ping-Pong Diplomacy.”

In 1973, the Philadelphia Orchestra toured China, enthralling more than 8,800 Chinese audience members with their amazing performances.

In January 1979, the China-US Accord for Cultural Exchange was signed—one of the three major documents ratified by the two nations in the course of establishing diplomatic relations. This established a framework for governmental and nongovernmental communication between the two nations.

Accelerating Amalgamation

In the late 1980s, cultural exchange between China and the US began to flourish. In 1987, the US film, Breakin’, was screened in China, and the culture of break dance was introduced to the Eastern country. A dance team, comprised of 17-year-old dancers like Ou Yang and Deng Ouge, won the championship at the National Break Dance Contest. Two years later, these young people, inspired by American pop culture, organized a rock band named The Face. Their song Give Me a Little Love was included into the music disc Rock China I.

Besides break dancing, the introduction of Western fast food into China also marked a change of urban lifestyle. On November 12, 1987, China’s first KFC restaurant was open on the Qianmen Street in Beijing. Despite the chilly weather, many waited for an hour for US-style fried chicken. There were so many people waiting that the restaurant managers called on the police to assure order.

Newspapers referred to the year 1987 as a milestone in the history of Sino-US cultural exchange. That year US-based Hasbro, Inc. authorized the Guangzhou Baiyunshan Toy Factory to produce the popular series of action figures known as Transformers. The Shanghai Audio & Video Museum and the Shanghai TV Station jointly introduced the 95-episode animated TV drama, Transformers. When it was broadcast at the end of 1987, countless Chinese children sat before black-and-white TV sets to watch the heroic stories of Autobots.

Twenty years later, the film Transformers, melding live actors and computer-generated characters, was introduced to China less than one week after its debut in the US. Like for its animated version, Chinese youngsters were enthusiastic.

The Chinese people have gained insight into the US in the course of sharing American pop culture. The TV drama, Beijingers in New York, filmed in 1992, portrayed the struggle of New York immigrants from Beijing amidst the Eastern and Western cultural crash. In 1994, The Fugitive, known as the first Hollywood production introduced to China, energized China’s film market. The blockbuster film Titanic, introduced to China in 1998, earned a staggering 360 million yuan.

In 2000, China launched its grandest cultural promotion campaign in nine US cities, including New York and Washington, D.C. The goal was to introduce China’s traditional culture and modern art to American people. Newspapers referred to the goodwill effort as “a dialogue of arts, a dialogue of souls.” The campaign not only added an auspicious ambience to the United Nations Millennium Summit held at that time, but also helped the American people recognize the remarkable aspects of Chinese culture.

Signposts of Synergy

Over the past three decades, cultural exchange between China and the US expanded and grew stronger. Benefiting from the support of governments, nongovernmental cultural exchange featuring commercialized and industrialized modes have become the norm. Cultural contact has bridged the souls of the people of the two nations.

On June 20, 2008, the US animated film, Kung Fu Panda, with an investment of $130 million, lit up the screens of China. The dreamlike landscapes and traditionally fanciful heroic saga, plus the charming panda character, compose an amalgamation of Chinese elements and American animated art.

An online survey conducted by Newsweek magazine indicates that among the top 20 Chinese cultural symbols in the eyes of ordinary American netizens are the Chinese language, the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Great Wall, the Gardens of Suzhou, Confucius, Taoism, the ancient book The Art of War, the Terracotta Warriors and Horses, Mogao Grottoes, the Tang Dynasty, silk, Chinese porcelain, Peking opera, the Shaolin Temple, martial arts, the classic novel Journey to the West, the Temple of Heaven, Chairman Mao, acupuncture and Chinese cuisine. And the top 20 American cultural symbols are Wall Street, Broadway, Hollywood, McDonald’s, NBA, Coca-Cola, Hilton, Marlboro, Disney, the Silicon Valley, Harvard University, Thanksgiving Day, Superman, the Statue of Liberty, Barbie, the White House, football, jazz, Starbucks and Wal-Mart.

Today, Chinese and Americans share their respective cultures like never before in history. It is common to see an American speaking fluent Chinese, an NBA player on the Great Wall, a Barbie doll in traditional Chinese garb, a Chinese youngster eating in McDonald’s or KFC, drinking Coca-Cola and watching American movies. All of this and much more attest to the thriving cultural communication between the two nations. More, each nation’s cultural symbols have become part of people’s lives in the other country. Representative of this building sense of commonality and goodwill, through the theme song of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, China expressed to the world, “We are one family.”