How have you been? Tennis? Hoping all is well in the Lee family. I was thinking about “Making Friends” the other day and thought of the below. As you well know, in the age of Covid 19, making new friends will be a bit more challenging. You may add this to your website if you like. Be safe, Phil
”My Friend” Because of our past, we are friends. Maybe it was the hobbies and interests that bonds us. It could be the weakness within us that we seek in each other’s strengths. Us, thinking alike and often finishing each other’s lines conjures familiarity. We can always count on each other. The color of your skin is unlike mine brought curiosity or of the same, brought commonality. We got each other’s backs. We never surprise each other, we expected it. We are a brother/sister from a different mother. We shared each other’s joys and sorrows. Our opinions are understood never to hurt but to be helpful. Yes, it is all of the before mentioned that made us friends. Thank-you for giving me permission. It was that very act that spawn our’s and all friendships. “Every day is unique and special”.
During the Warring States Period in ancient China, there was a man named Boya Yu who played the Qin (a kind of string instrument in China) very well.
One day when he was playing the Qin in a remote forest, a woodcutter named Ziqi Zhong came by. Boya used music to express his thoughts on climbing mountains. Ziqi would chime in and suggest,” As lofty as Mount Tai “.
Boya used his music again to express the running water. Ziqi complemented: “What a mighty river it is !” What Boya placed in music, Ziqi always responded with powerful understanding. Thus the two became bosom friends.
Later, when Ziqi died, Boya lost his bosom friend and was extremely sad, he threw his Qin away and vowed never to play again.
From this historical story, a special term “知音（zhi-yin)” in Chinese is thus created, which could be translated as “recognizing your music, inner feelings and potential impacts.”
This term “high mountain-running water” in Chinese is often used today to suggest the rare fortune of having friends who can really appreciate your passion, recognize your talents and endeavors, and further encourage and inspire you to reach a higher level.
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Billy’s Comments: Prof. Wang Lili was the first Vice President of Ningbo University and an esteemed Material Scientist in China. He was responsible for getting me back to teach Architecture at Ningb U. in 1991. He is certainly one of my most admired, respected, and loved cousins – we are related as his maternal grandmother was the youngest sister of my paternal grandfather. I requested that he write something for my Friendship & Friendshipology Website, and within a week I received his response:
“Dear Ming Sing, It’s quite difficult for me to write a story about ancient Chinese Friendship in English as you requested. I tried my best due to the deep Friendship between you and me. I wrote a story here about “High Mountains and Running Water “Please see the attachment. I hope you like it. Cheers, Lili”
Wang Lili (Lili WANG, Lilih WANG), male, born in 1934, the Professor and Honorary Director of the Mechanics and Materials Science Research Centre at Ningbo University in China. Since 1956, he has worked in Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Institute of Chemical Machinery; University of Science and Technology of China. In 1985 he participated in the founding of Ningbo University and served as vice President. He was the Chairman of the Explosion Mechanics Committee of CSTAM, and has been the Chairman or Co-Chairman of several international conferences.
His research interests are stress-wave propagation, dynamic response of materials and structures, rate-dependent constitutive relation of materials under high strain rates, dynamic fracture, adiabatic shear localization, damage mechanics and impact engineering. To this subject, he has contributed immensely, with more than 300 papers. His books entitled “Foundations of Stress Waves” and entitled “Dynamics of Materials” are widely used in China as textbooks for graduated students since 1980s and the corresponding English editions have been published by Elsevier.
Over the past 60 years, he cultivated a number of outstanding students (including academicians in China) engaged in this field.
His scientific research achievements have won the National Science and Technology Conference Award, The Gansu Province Science and Technology Achievement Award, the Zhejiang Province science and technology Award, the Ministry of Education natural science first prize. In 2013, he won the Second Prize of National Natural Science (the first prize is vacant).
Billy’s Comment : Indeed, Prof. Wang’s ideas apply to Building Friendship Globally – Person to Person, People to People, as well as Country to Country.
Prof. Ban Wang – Stanford University
Perceptions and relations between America and China have gone through good times and bad, depending on the geopolitical barometers. In 2001, the US intelligence plane intruded into China’s air space and got intercepted and forced down by a Chinese plane, aggravating mutual tension and sable rattling. Since then, America’s strategic pivot to the Asian-Pacific regions, the ongoing trade war, the conflict over the South China Sea and Hong Kong, and the Covid-19 crisis are now fueling the tension to a boiling point. But a moment’s reflection should quiet the horrible drumbeat: the US and China are inextricably interdependent and interconnected. All the existential anxiety about mutual threat and zero-sum game cannot diminish the prospect of the intertwined fate of the twin in the same boat. You do not have to look further than Stanford to realize how much mutual learning and joint ventures are going on between the two countries. China and US. are involved in deep partnership in many areas: economy, trade, technology, health care, supply chain, the environment, etc. A strike at the other means shooting at one’s own feet.
The destiny of America has intertwined with that of China—a record of curiosity, sympathy, and understanding. America came into being, they say, because Christophe Columbus discovered America. Actually, it was the search for sea routes to China that the explorer stumbled on the new world. At his death Columbus still believed that the American continent was Asia. An American minister wrote 400 years ago, “We people of America may be said to owe to China the discovery of our continent. I often advise my students, you come to Stanford not just to learn computer science and to embark on a tech project. You come here to build bridges between Chinese and American people. One of the most effective ways is cultural and intellectual exchange and learning from each other. Students and scholars are in a good position to carry out and fulfill that noble mission. If the governments of two countries often face off in confrontation, the people of two countries have always sympathize, connect, and befriend each other.
Sino-US cultural exchanges date back to the dawn of modern China. In 1901, Lin Shu, a well-known writer, translated Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin and commented on the tragic fate of black slaves that paralleled Chinese subjugation under colonialism. Titled 黑奴吁天录 (black slaves’ outcry for justice from Heaven), the translation invests the American novel with a classical Chinese call for Heavenly justice. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was adapted to a spoken drama by an overseas Chinese student group in Japan, headed by Li Shutong. In the Lu Xun Academy in Yan’an during the revolutionary years, George Washington, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and many other Americans were admired as heroes for building a democratic nation and modern culture. Some American even joined the ranks of Chinese fighters in the War of Resistance against Japanese invasion. In the 1960s, Chinese support of the Third World movement resonated with America’s civil rights movement, and the Martin Luther King assassination in 1968 sparked huge street demonstrations for days in Chinese streets against racism. Reading King’s “I Have a Dream” and reciting Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech were a routine practice for English learners in China. The Chinese leadership and people understood very well what the multi-ethnic, civil rights groups in America were fighting for: minority rights, human rights, the call to end the Vietnam War, and demands for social, gender, and racial equality.
By the time Nixon visited China and the Sino-US diplomatic normalization in 1972, many Chinese began to study English the way they had studied Chairman Mao’s little red books. National and provincial radio stations broadcast English lessons day and night. I learned my first English lessons mostly by listening to Voice of America. Based on a very popular English conversation primer English 900, the lessons were broadcast from VOA’s station in Hong Kong, usually in the midnight. At the risk of being accused of listening to the “enemy” radio, I got up in the dark of night, wrapped myself up with a quilt, and listened to the lessons, almost suffocating inside. There was no headphone at that time.
By the time Nixon visited China and the Sino-US diplomatic normalization in 1972, many Chinese began to study English the way they had studied Chairman Mao’s little red books. National and provincial radio stations broadcast English lessons day and night. I learned my first English lessons mostly by listening to Voice of America. Based on a very popular English conversation primer English 900, the lessons were broadcast from VOA’s station in Hong Kong, usually in the midnight. At the risk of being accused of listening to the “enemy” radio, I got up in the dark of night, wrapped myself up with a quilt, and listened to the lessons, almost suffocating inside. There was no headphone at that time.
In my undergraduate years in Beijing Foreign Language Institute in the 1980s, things American swept through colleges and society. The English Department, the largest of all, was nicknamed “British Empire” for its capacity of the winner in sports, theater activity and other contests. But few English majors liked the Oxford or Queen English taught by British teachers. Instead, most students would favor American teachers, listen and imitate the accent of VOA. Everybody tried to sound like the Yankees. It was China’s honeymoon with America, which was an image for young people to dream and to strive for.
But America was also marred with flaws unworthy of the democratic principles. The TV series Roots, a saga of the slave trade, Africans’ journey to America, and racial exploitation and oppression in plantations, left a deep impression on me. That did not stop us from admiring America’s “power.” Watching the movie Rambo: The First Blood, we all became big fans of the macho hero played by Sylvester Stallone. But Prof. David Crook, a Canadian anthropologist and “foreign expert,” came out and put up a small poster on our classroom building to dissuade us from this deplorable mindset. We were being poisoned by imperialist ideology, he protested. Professor Cook urged us to be critical of the film, which was a propaganda of American military action in Vietnam and colonial conquest.
After graduation in the mid-1980s, most of my classmates chose to come to America to study or work. Those early birds were the envy of all.
Since then, America has presented a mixed image to the Chinese people. China, on the other hand, also has also been cast in mixed images: it is either a monstrous capitalist juggernaut or an evil Communist power. Recently the Cold War narrative of China and US. Is being updated, fueling the conflict and misperception. Academic area studies during the Cold War targeted specific geographical areas of strategic relevance to the US, presuming an authoritarian rule behind the iron curtain. This approach says, here we had democracy; over there was totalitarianism. This rigid divide blocks mutual understanding and communication and mystified people about the values and goals shared by all Chinese and Americans; it leaves people mystified as to why Chinese have long loved for Martin Luther King and held up so many Americans as champions of democracy and as icons for China.
Today, what fatally obstructs mutual understanding, sympathy, and communication is the myth of the absolute difference that divides America and China and places them in different universes. The myth declares that two countries have entirely different cultures and systems, that the difference is so huge that the two countries cannot co-exist under one eaHeaven and on planet Earth. This is a lie. The history of China-American cultural and intellectual exchange has constantly proven it to be a lie. People of both countries have always been able to understand and sympathize with each other and share certain values–as human beings and even in their distinct identity as Chinese and American. The Chinese revolutionaries admired George Washington, Martin Luther King; Chinese citizens applauded and supported America’s civil rights movement and anti-racialist movement. Chinese English learners love and appreciate a vast array of American writers, Hollywood and pop songs. Chinese consumers love myriad things American from Apple I-phone to cars. So, what is the real difference?
For people trapped in the myth, China’s lockdown and ubiquitous masks in response to the Covid-19 reflects its deeply entrenched “cultural difference” rooted in totalitarianism and conformism, which are unacceptable to freedom loving Americans. This irrational obsession with “cultural difference” is destroying the fabric of the global community and leading to more disasters and hatred, until people realize that lockdown and masks are not about Chinese culture or the American way of life. These public health measures are human and universal; they reach into a deeper and ancient core of human civilization that transcends the so-called cultural, national or political differences. It is a human civilization rooted in moral empathy, obligation, and care for your own safety and the safety of your neighbors.
Ban Wang is William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies in East Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. His major publications include The Sublime Figure of History (1997), Illuminations from the Past (2004), History and Memory (Lish yu jiyi) (2004) and China in the World: Culture, Politics, and World Vision(forthcoming 2021). He has edited 8 books on Chinese film, memory studies, Chinese studies in the US, the Chinese Revolution, socialism, and the New Left, including Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture and World Politics (2017). He has taught at SUNY-Stony Brook, Harvard, Rutgers, East China Normal University, Yonsei, and Seoul National University.
Friendship… It sounds like a lifelong quest for all of us regardless of whether you want just one true friend or you are just interested in getting connected with as many people as you can. For me, yes, it is also my wish to find some true friends throughout my lifetime but when it comes to friendship, I cannot put aside a particular situation given to me – twins. I was born as an identical twin, so wherever I was, I would always be with my twin brother. We had nothing to hide and even when either of us had a girlfriend, we would spend time together with her as if we were triplets! In my childhood, my parents often yelled, “Don’t stay in your own world! Get down here and talk to us!” When I was in my teens, my twin brother and I were given ‘our’ own room on the second floor of our parents’ house, so as soon as we got back from school or we finished our dinner, we would go upstairs and close the door of our room.
(A scene from my childhood, Kawasaki, Japan) – Hiro at right
We were so happy that we didn’t want anything but ‘our world’ that was taken for granted. Even each of us didn’t think deeply about to figure out what it really meant to us. But, perhaps, it could be thought of as an ultimate form of love and friendship that would be pursued by generations to come! I am so thankful for God to give my twin brother and me the greatest gift to sense and touch what love or friendship is all about beyond any social and biological boundaries. On the flip side of it, however, one problem came up to us: How might we get away from our comfort zone, or ‘our world,’ and leverage and apply what we have sensed, touched and learned through our ‘twin’ world into another real world of human society? This genuine question together with my relevant life experiences shaped my passion to make this real world a better place and commit myself to the wellbeing of next generations through friendships and things I love.
It was Dad’s death that made me realize something I really lost that made me feel loved and valued (from Dad). That vacuum forced me to find out an alternate to fill it – friends. My father once said, “Remember, one day, parents will die, normally earlier than you. Then, who’s gonna support you and make your life sweeter, later? Not your brothers but friends. True friends! Hiro, are you confident enough to say that you feel happy now? Is your current work what you really want to do throughout your life?” It made much sense to me not just because he was a successful business man as a Global Executive Vice President of Toyota but also because I have heard a lot about how much he had put others’ needs before his own and cared about and for others. His relationship with others always started off as friendship.
A year later since he passed away, I ended up quitting my high-paying consulting job and, while staying connected with my friends and exploring new friendships, I followed my authentic path to become who I want to be, as a co-creator in education innovation.
(At the opening ceremony for SEELS, Tokyo, Japan)
It was along the way when I met Billy – that was in June 2015. I was invited as an awardee, together with the co-awardee, Mr. Frank Furtan, then President of the Swatch Group (USA), to the 5th World Children’s Festival that took place at The Ellipse behind The White House. Billy was also invited as a guest speaker and came there on that date. Sure enough, this condition might seem insufficient for Billy and me to come across despite the fact that both of us were merely at the same place on the same day. We had a mutual friend, Chris, a British senior guy, and Chris kindly asked if I had any time to meet up with him and Billy together for lunch. Then, we hit it off right away by sharing a common vision – to commit ourselves to making a positive impact on society. It was a natural way of making friends because of the nature of friendship, which is built upon trust and respect, first and foremost.
(After the ceremony of World Children’s Award 2015, Washington D.C.)
I must acknowledge, however, that some may argue that it is not called ‘friendship’ but ‘acquaintance.’ Yes, that argument would be justifiable if I merely bumped into Billy not through a trusted person like Chris, or our mutual friend, without any common values and thoughts. Rather, our meetup showcases the magic of friendship: A good friend always brings out the best in me and helps me expand my social circle as I wish! So, not surprisingly, Billy and I had stayed connected with each other since then, and a year and a half later, he kindly invited me to his house in Palo Alto and we made our friendship to the next level! (I met his wife, Lucille, as well, and we spent New Year’s Eve together, wishing us a wonderful new year 2017 full of laughter, health and happiness!)
(At Billy’s house on the New Year’s Day, Palo Alto, CA)
That is why I am writing this to him and his fellows. Such reciprocity in friendship represents how my life has been shaped, and you can easily grasp it if you trace the thread of my friendship. Let me run the clock backward, quickly, from the time when I met Billy for the first time. First, why was Chris there at the venue of the World Children’s Festival? Because I let him know that I was invited to the Festival. Okay, then, why was I invited? Because the host, International Child Art Foundation, awarded me the World Children’s Award 2015. Why so? Because they thought my Foundation (Akira Foundation) deserved the award after recognizing my Foundation’s activities to promote social innovation and support and engage youth as leaders of social change in Japan and beyond. Then, what activities made ICAF believe that Akira Foundation would deserve the award? The following two outstanding activities – TOMODACHI U.S.-Japan Youth Exchange Program and SEELS, or Social Enterprise English Language School led by Filipino migrant women in Japan. To make the long stories short, these two projects were brought to life through new friendships. For the TOMODACHI Program, one Director of American Councils for International Education approached my co-founder (my twin brother!) of the Foundation through LinkedIn. For the SEELS, Cesar Santoyo, who then had worked on supporting Filipino migrants across Japan and helping them improve the quality of their lives, approached me by email just right after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan in March 2011. Then, how did Cesar know me before sending an email to me? Actually, he was an attendee at an international conference where Akira Foundation was an institutional partner and my name was listed as a guest speaker in the brochure. As with the meet-up between Billy and me, we hit it off immediately when we met up in person, and it turned out that Cesar and I founded the new social enterprise together to create jobs for Filipino migrants women who used to have no choice but to work as hostesses at a night club or pub.
(With CLS Directors worldwide at the head office of American Councils, Washington, D.C.)
So, the question may arise like this: Why did Chris, a Director of American Councils, and Cesar trust us? Maybe, Akira Foundation’s activities and track record, for sure. Yet, it is not good enough. Friends and friendship – they endorse me for what I have done, and the halo effect of trust has been accumulated through friendships and brought me closer to who I want to be, over time.
Four years have already passed by since I closed my Foundation as time-bound. I am currently an external advisor in international relations at a national university in Japan and help them explore international opportunities. And still working with American Councils to develop and implement another national program called the Critical Language Scholarship Japan Program that is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Meanwhile, I decided to go back to school and pursue a doctoral degree (Ed.D. in Penn Chief Learning Officer) at the University of Pennsylvania. Anyway, no matter where I am and what I do, I stay connected emotionally with my friends even while staying away from them, socially and physically amid the COVID-19 pandemic. No doubt that friends enrich my life and the world around us, and make me get through the complex world much easier than it would otherwise be. It sounds like I were still in another parochial world with my twin brother because I feel so happy and alive!
Hirofumi is an external advisor in international relations at the Institute of Global Human Resource Development (GHRD) at Okayama University, Japan. He supports the University’s international activities, as well as promoting and enhancing a culture of global engagement across and beyond the campus.
Until recently, Hirofumi was a professor at GHRD at Okayama University and an institute director of Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Prior to the position at the University, Hirofumi had led Akira Foundation since its inception in 2009 and kept front and top of mind its vision and mission, “Social Bridge Between Japan and Global Village,” for seven years.
Hirofumi had taken several advisory roles in national and international organizations including as a strategic partner for the UN-led World Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship (theWSIE) and a country director in Japan for the TOMODACHI U.S.-Japan Youth Exchange Program at American Councils for International Educations. Hirofumi was also a project assistant professor in the Global Leadership Program (GLP) at The University of Tokyo (2013-2015).
I’m 58 years old. I consider myself a gregarious extrovert. I have friendly chats with total strangers all the time. I have many friends. It’s in my blood, in my DNA. After all, I’m the son of the creator of this blog — Mr. Gregarious himself, Billy Lee.
In the culmination of the classic Christmas movie It’s A Wonderful Life, Clarence the angel leaves a copy of the book Tom Sawyer for main character George Bailey played by actor Jimmy Stewart. Inside the cover of Tom Sawyer is a handwritten note from Clarence: “Dear George, Remember no man is a failure who has friends!”
Well guess what, I currently have 726 Facebook Friends! Yup, you heard that right, 726! I got so excited, I told my wife. She said, “These are not the kinds of friends Clarence was talking about.” She laughed, “You’re a tremendous failure.”
She asked, “How many of those friends would you recognize if you ran into them by chance on the street?” Hmmm. Maybe 75%. “And of the ones you recognized,” she asked, “how many of their names would you remember?” Ummm, probably 95%. She said, “No way. Prove it.”
So I decided to prove it. Of my 726 Facebook friends, I counted how many are Actual Friends, how many are Close Friends, and how many are just Acquaintances.
I defined an Actual Friend as someone whom I would recognize and whose name I would remember if I ran into him/her by chance in the street. It’s someone I’ve spend considerable time with. Someone whom I’d look forward to having lunch with. Someone whom I respect as a person and whom I would offer varying degrees of help, if they needed.
Most people would define a Close Friend as someone who would be there for you if you were in trouble. The problem is that you never really will know until the day you are in trouble. If and when that day comes, you will likely find that some of the people you thought were Close Friends were not there for you, but some of the people you did not consider Close Friends were there for you.
I, instead, define a Close Friend based on how I would respond to them if they were in trouble. I would drop what I’m doing in an instant to help a Close Friend in trouble. For me, Close friends are people I’ve spent a lot of time with or have had an intense bonding experience. They are people I have maintained contact with throughout our lives. They are up there with family.
I went through each one of my 726 Facebook friends. 50 were family. Of the remaining, 676, drum roll, please.. 20 (3%) were Close Friends, 151 (24%) were Actual Friends, and 505 (63%) were Acquaintances, Well, I may not have as many friends as I thought, but at least I did not fail to prove my wife right, again. She sometimes jokingly says to me, “You’re such a loser”. My response is, “At least I didn’t marry one.”
BILLY’S COMMENTS : Prescott is indeed my NO. 1 Gregarious Son, but I have to admit that he is much more witty and high-spirited than I. He is also a Great Prankster among his good friends.
