John Pomfret > Quotes

“I liked the way it felt to speak Chinese—the elegant rise and fall of the tones, the sensuous way my tongue flitted about my mouth and the economy of a language that needed very few words to say a lot. Speaking good French demands control of one’s lips; American English relies on an open mouth; but Chinese can be spoken perfectly even through clenched teeth. “Picture your tongue as a butterfly,” one of my instructors would say, and there it would be, flapping against my mouth and banging against my teeth as I sought to harness it and speak Chinese.”
― John Pomfret, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China

“For the United States, however, trading with China not only saved but helped shape the new republic. America’s discovery of the China market was integral to the rise of the United States. For the Chinese, America also meant opportunity—for their officials, for their showmen, and for one globally minded businessman.”
― John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

“1977,”
― John Pomfret, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China

“Like all Chinese youth, the first sentence he’d learned in school was “Long live Chairman Mao!” To be carrying out the chairman’s orders gave the precocious eleven-year-old a powerful sense of purpose and self-worth. “The more ruthless we are to enemies, the more we love the people,” the team would chant together.”
― John Pomfret, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China

“China in 1800 was a manufacturing powerhouse, responsible for about one-third of all the goods made in the world.”
― John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

“In the years before the Communist revolution of 1949, the US-educated scholars, scientists, and artists in China made up the backbone of the country’s scientific and intellectual elite and served as the conscience of their nation.”
― John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

“To America’s founders, China was a source of inspiration. They saw it as a harmonious society with officials chosen on merit, where the arts and philosophy flourished, and the peasantry labored happily on the land.”
― John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

“In China’s first-ever national parliamentary elections, held in the winter of 1912–1913, Sun’s Nationalist Party won a majority of seats.”
― John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

“In 1902, China rediscovered America. The Qing court sent its first group of government-sponsored students to the United States since the Yung Wing mission. Three years later, Chinese students finally gained entry to West Point. The first group of Boxer Indemnity students came in 1909. By the 1920s, the United States was hosting more Chinese students—one-third of them women—than all the nations of Europe combined. For the next four decades, China would send more students to America than any other country except Canada. Chinese students were present on almost every campus of every major university in the nation.”
― John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

“The idioms also revealed that Chinese shared a barnyard bawdiness with American English. My favorite was “taking off your pants to fart”—wasted effort.”
― John Pomfret, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China

“If there is a pattern to this baffling complexity, it may be best described as a never-ending Buddhist cycle of reincarnation. Both sides experience rapturous enchantment begetting hope, followed by disappointment, repulsion, and disgust, only to return to fascination once again.”
― John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present