Last Updated on September 24, 2026 by Jeff Tomas
BEIJING – Over the past several months, I’ve had the chance to sit down with people whose lives have, in very different ways, been shaped by both China and the United States. I started these conversations for Hello from the Other Shore, a CGTN Radio podcast series about the China-US relationship beyond the headlines.
I spoke with Americans who have built lives in China, educators connecting students across borders, farmers whose livelihoods reach all the way to China, environmentalists and photographers working together, and people using media to share their experiences of China with audiences around the world.
But as the conversations unfolded, I found myself listening for something beyond the questions.
In one of the episodes, we brought together two participants — one from China and one from the US — who took part in a China-US national parks exchange program.
Binbin is a Chinese conservationist, and Rob is an American photographer. What struck me was how much they had gained from the exchange — not just professionally, but personally.
Rob told me that working alongside Binbin and the other Chinese members of the team taught him to “see better” by learning to see differently. Their different cultural and professional perspectives changed the way he looked at landscapes and thought about conservation.
Dr. Li Binbin and Rob Green join Hello from the Other Shore for an inspiring conversation on conservation, storytelling and China-U.S. exchange.
Binbin, meanwhile, came away with concrete lessons from the US national park system. She was impressed by the public respect for park rangers and programs such as Junior Ranger, and hoped China would continue to raise recognition of rangers as a professional career.
Rob found lessons in the other direction, too. He said China’s tighter controls on public access can give wildlife and their habitats more room to thrive. By contrast, he noted that in some US national parks, heavy crowds around animals like wolves and bears can sometimes make wildlife encounters feel more like a spectacle.
That is probably why this interview stayed with me.
The exchange wasn’t about proving whose system was better. It was about looking at the same questions from different perspectives, recognizing what the other side does well, and being willing to learn. And the connection went beyond professional knowledge: when Rob was struggling with being away from his newborn child, Binbin was there for him as a friend.
For me, that is what a people-to-people exchange can achieve at its best. You may begin by learning about national parks, but you can end up learning how another person sees the world — and seeing your own world a little differently as a result.
There are other stories here, too: an American who came to China as a young student and never really left; a content creator who has spent years moving between two cultures; and a businessman who has ridden China’s economic wave for more than three decades.
They are not stories about countries in the abstract. They are stories about people — the places they choose to live, the relationships they build, the things they learn, and sometimes, the ways their views change along the way.
As the relationship between Beijing and Washington continues to evolve, those connections will evolve too. Some may become harder; others may emerge in unexpected ways.
But people will keep meeting people. And that, I believe, is one of the most enduring parts of the China-US relationship — and one with plenty of room to grow. That is what I heard from the other shore.
By Wang Zihang – CGTN Radio
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