Digital Exhibits

"Reflections on China" essay following 1979 delegation trip to China

A written piece titled "Reflections on China" by Gary Conkling, the staff director for US Congressman Les AuCoin. In the 1970s, Representative AuCoin led efforts to normalize trade relations between the US and the People’s Republic of China. When the two countries normalized economic and diplomatic relations in January 1979, AuCoin led the first trade delegation to China just one month later, traveling with a group of Oregon business leaders. In his reflections on the trip, Gonkling details AuCoin's efforts to remove barriers to trade between the nations, his experience traveling and meeting Chinese politicians and citizens, making an appeal at the Peking Zoo for a rare animal exchange involving Giant Pandas to Portland's Washington Park Zoo, seeing a brain surgery with acupuncture at Huashan Hospital, visiting Peking University and being lectured on the Cultural Revolution by a Professor Hung, visiting Feng Pan People's Commune, attending a Peking opera show, and sightseeing and investigative research at the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, Summer Palace, Imperial Palace/The Forbidden City, the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square, the Port of Shanghai, Ma Ling Canning Factory, the Shanghai Arts & Crafts Research Institute, Kwangchow, and Kweilin. Conkling also described his observations about the Chinese people, the economic conditions of the average Chinese citizen, and made notes about the food the group was exposed to and what they learned about the Sino-Vietnamese War, which was ongoing while the group was in China.

This is one of a collection of digitized objects from the Les AuCoin Papers (MS.147) at the Pacific University Archives. AuCoin served in the Oregon House of Representatives (1971-1975) and in the United States House of Representatives from Oregon's 1st District (1975-1993).

Conkling, Gary

February 12-24, 1979

United States. Congress. House.

Legislators--United States

China--Foreign relations--United States.

Sino-Vietnamese Conflict, 1979.

China

PUA_MS147_543

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

Les AuCoin Papers, Pacific University Archives

Text