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罗伯特·戴利：他的许多路都通向中国
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-12/19/content_19125368.htm
2014-12-19 华盛顿陈伟华（中国日报美国版）
1984年，罗伯特·戴利从雪城大学毕业，他想找一份能让他周游世界的工作。显然，外交官的工作符合他的要求。于是，他于1984年参加了外交官考试，并通过了考试，并于1986年成为一名外交官。
1987年夏天，年轻的戴利被派往中国，尽管他从未上过任何与中国或国际关系有关的课程。他在学校也没有学过中文。他在雪城大学主修绘画漫画插图和美国文学。
威尔逊中心基辛格中美研究中心主任罗伯特·戴利在办公室接受《中国日报》采访。陈伟华/《中国日报》
“我不知道我是怎么得到这些的，”戴利回忆道，说这全是运气。
没有任何先验知识
戴利在 20 世纪 60 年代和 70 年代在锡拉丘兹长大，他说他第一次听说中国是儿童的种族主义歌曲，这些歌曲贬低中国人的卑鄙。
但他在 20 世纪 70 年代观看的电视节目《神奇的陈氏家族》将中国人描绘得更加积极。戴利 10 岁时读的第一本小说恰好也是一本关于二战时期中国的儿童读物，名为《六十个父亲的房子》。
这就是戴利在锡拉丘兹对中国的全部了解。
1987年，他首次出访中国，这也是他第一次出访美国。“那是美中关系发展的黄金时期，”戴利谈到他第一次到北京，担任美国大使馆文化教育官员时说道。“当时的气氛十分乐观，非常积极。”
他结识了很多年轻艺术家，比如后来成为著名电影演员和导演的姜文，以及后来被称为中国摇滚之父的崔健。
戴利形容这些年轻的中国艺术家对美国和美国文化非常感兴趣。
那是 DVD 出现之前的日子。戴利在美国驻北京大使馆每周放映的电影吸引了许多年轻人。
在一个文化交流项目中，戴利提议，美国不应该像往常一样邀请古典小提琴家和古典钢琴家来演出，而应该带来不同的音乐。美国吉他手、摇滚明星维克·特里格于 1990 年来到中国，与中国同行一起授课并举办音乐会。
戴利说，当时中美两国人民都对思想非常感兴趣。
“如果米兰·昆德拉的书出版了，那将是大新闻，每个人都想读它，”戴利说。“当萨特的书出版时，人们想读这些书。所以当时有很多知识分子的兴奋。”
“我现在去中国了，”他说。“谈话远没有我们以前那么有趣。以前是谈论书籍和思想；现在全是消费主义。
“每平方米多少钱？”戴利用流利的中文说。他说，物质主义是他现在去中国感到沮丧的事情之一。
关注中国
尽管戴利在 20 世纪 80 年代末和 90 年代初在中国工作，但他还是于 1991 年辞去了外交工作。29 岁的他觉得自己对中国很感兴趣，但对从事外交工作并不感兴趣。
“如果你在外交部门工作，你必须能在全球各地工作，而且你要从一个国家到另一个国家，”戴利说。“我真的想更专注于中美关系。”
此外，戴利所在的美国新闻署 (USIA) 当时因预算削减而被削弱。戴利觉得外交部门不是一个好地方。
他还描述了想家的感觉。“我当时还是单身，所以是时候回家了，”他说。
戴利回到锡拉丘兹与父母团聚。1991 年夏天，他开始在纽约州伊萨卡的康奈尔大学教授中文。
银幕明星
1992 年感恩节晚上，在父母家度过一晚后，戴利回到自己的公寓，接到姜文的电话，说他们都在纽约，想让他去见他们。于是戴利去了纽约，见了他的老朋友，他们大多是电影演员和导演，比如姜文、冯小刚和郑晓龙，当时他们正在拍摄一部名为《北京人在纽约》的电视剧。
戴利被赋予了服装厂老板大卫·麦卡锡的角色。这是他第一次拍电视剧。戴利说，作为一个单身年轻人，他可以决定辞去康奈尔大学的工作，加入电视剧的制作。
“你有多少次半夜接到电话，问‘你想拍电视剧吗？’你应该对机会说‘是’，”他说。
这部电视剧于 1994 年 10 月 1 日播出后立即大获成功。
中国仍然认可达利在剧中的角色，而不是他目前担任基辛格中美研究所所长。
达利记得姜文曾鼓励他继续演戏，但他不想，现在回想起来，他说这个决定是正确的。
达利引用的主要原因是，他认为自己不是一个好演员，而且除了北京人之外，没有多少好的角色可以让外国人扮演。
“所以即使我想走这条路，那条路也不存在，”他说。
愉快的空闲时间
在随后的几年里，达利往返于中美之间，从事咨询、公开演讲、媒体和电视制作，例如帮助制作中国版的《芝麻街》。
在美中关系全国委员会的安排下，他甚至在1997年华盛顿举行的中国国家主席江泽民的招待会上担任前国务卿亨利·基辛格的翻译。
他还曾在纽约州州长安德鲁·库莫担任住房和城市发展部部长、现任政治局常委的俞正声担任中国建设部部长期间担任美中住房计划美方主任。
戴利说，他很享受那些年自由自在的感觉。
2001年，当戴利有机会担任约翰霍普金斯大学南京中心美方主任时，他立即抓住了机会。该中心是马里兰州巴尔的摩市的约翰霍普金斯大学和南京大学的合资项目。他最终与妻子和两个儿子在南京度过了六年。
“这对我个人和职业来说都是一次奇妙的经历，”戴利说，他将该项目的中美学生描述为“一个非常棒的、敬业的群体”。
戴利说，与近年来前往中国进行高管培训的其他一些美国大学不同，霍普金斯大学南京中心更注重将人们聚集在一起，让他们一起生活一年，学习彼此的语言。
他称霍普金斯南京中心是真正的合作伙伴关系，即使中美双方有时意见严重分歧。
戴利在中国生活并见证了这一伟大转变，这段经历也非常有趣。
他喜欢在中国工作，尤其是作为一名外国人。
对戴利来说，中国的工作方式压力太大，令人沮丧。他的许多中国朋友工作非常努力，从未休假，也没有自己的时间。
“你需要老板在下午 5 点后不打扰你，这样你就可以回家过自己的生活，”戴利说。“这就是人们所需要的。”
2007 年，戴利离开南京，返回美国，他说这个决定主要是为了他的孩子和父母。他希望他们彼此了解。他还觉得中国可能不是孩子长大后的好地方，因为中国孩子实际上不怎么出去玩。
在戴利看来，中国父母对成功的定义往往很狭隘。但他说，他和来自中国的妻子在教育三个孩子（儿子艾萨克、马特奥和女儿克莱尔）方面其实是相辅相成的。
回到美国后，戴利在马里兰大学的马里兰中国计划中又工作了六年。他称赞马里兰大学有能力将中国人带到马里兰接受培训。但他感叹，如今的大学不再提供中国研究专业。
2013年8月，戴利成为基辛格中美研究所所长，该研究所创始人芮效俭退休。芮效俭出生于中国，父母是传教士，曾任美国驻华大使，他对中国和中美关系的精辟见解备受推崇。
戴利再次表示，自己非常幸运和荣幸能担任这份工作。他理解基辛格的愿景是进行坦诚、知情和尊重的对话，旨在尽可能保持两国关系的合作性而非竞争性。
“但你不能否认棘手的问题，”戴利说。
真诚的接受
“我坚信双方都有能力和专业知识来成功管理这种复杂、互利且危险的关系，”他说。“这是可以做到的。”
他认为，美方需要对中国作为规范制定者和制度建设者表现出真诚的接受。
“我们看到美国反对亚洲基础设施投资银行就是一个坏例子，”戴利说。“我认为这是美国展示接受、积极参与和鼓励其他国家参与的绝佳机会，同时表示，是的，我们坚持透明度，尊重环境规则和劳工保护。”
另一方面，戴利认为中国不擅长提出规则，并提出具体规则。
chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
（《中国日报》美国版 2014 年 12 月 19 日第 14 页）
Robert Daly: Many of his paths lead to China
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-12/19/content_19125368.htm
2014-12-19 13:02
By Chen Weihua in Washington(China Daily USA)
When Robert Daly graduated from Syracuse University in 1984, he was looking for a job that he hoped could let him travel the world.
Clearly that of diplomat fit the profile. So he took the Foreign Service exam in 1984, passed it, and became a diplomat in 1986.
The young Daly was sent to China in the summer of 1987, despite having never taken any classes related to China or international relations. Neither had he studied the Chinese language in school. His major at Syracuse was drawing cartoon illustrations and American literature.
Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Center on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, talks to China Daily in his office. Chen Weihua / China Daily
"I don't know how I got it," Daly recalled, saying it was luck all the way.
No prior knowledge
Growing up in Syracuse in the 1960s and 1970s, Daly said the first thing he heard about China was children's racist songs demeaning the Chinese for being mean.
But the TV show - The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan - that he watched in the 1970s had portrayed the Chinese in a more positive light.
The first novel Daly read as a 10-year-old also happened to be a children's book about World War II-era China, called House of Sixty Fathers.
That was all the exposure to China that Daly got in Syracuse.
When he embarked on his first diplomatic mission to China in 1987, it also was his first trip outside the United States.
"It was a great time to be in US-China relations," Daly said of the time he first got to Beijing, working as a culture and education officer at the US embassy. "There was so much optimism. It was so positive."
He got to know a lot of young artists, people like Jiang Wen, who later became a big shot film actor and director, and Cui Jian, later known as the father of Chinese rock 'n' roll.
Daly described the young Chinese artists as very interested in America and American culture.
Those were the days before DVDs. The weekly film showings at the US embassy in Beijing that Daly conducted attracted a lot of young people.
In a cultural exchange program, Daly proposed that instead of bringing classical violinists and classical pianists as the US usually did, it should bring different music. Vic Trigger, an American guitarist and rock 'n' roll star, came to China in 1990 to teach and hold concerts with his Chinese counterparts.
Daly said that people in both China and the US were much interested in ideas then.
"If Milan Kundera's book was published, it was big news, and everyone wanted to read it," Daly said. "When Sartre's books were published, people wanted to read these books. So there was a lot of intellectual excitement.
"I go to China now," he said. "The conversation is not nearly as interesting as the conversation we used to have. It was conversation about books and ideas; now it's all consumerism.
"How much is it per square meter?" Daly said in fluent Chinese. He said that materialism is one of the frustrations for him going to China now.
Focus on China
While enjoying his work in China in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Daly quit the Foreign Service in 1991. The 29-year-old felt that he was much interested in China, but wasn't as interested in a career in foreign service.
"If you are in the Foreign Service, you have to be available for worldwide work, and you go from country to country," Daly said. "I really wanted to focus on US-China more exclusively."
Also, the US Information Agency (USIA) that Daly belonged to had been weakened at the time due to budget cuts. Daly felt the Foreign Service wasn't a great place to be.
He also described being homesick. "I was still single, so it was just sort of time to go home," he said.
Daly returned to Syracuse to join his parents. In the summer of 1991, he started to teach Chinese at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Screen star
On Thanksgiving night in 1992, when he went back to his own apartment after spending the evening at his parents' house, Daly received a call from Jiang Wen, telling him that they were all in New York City and wanted him to come meet them.
So Daly went to New York to meet his old friends, mostly film actors and directors such as Jiang Wen, Feng Xiaogang and Zheng Xiaolong, who were shooting a TV series called Beijingers in New York.
Daly was given the role of David McCarthy, the owner of a clothing factory.
It was his first experience in a TV series. Daly said that as a single young man, he could make the decision to quit his job at Cornell and join the TV production.
"How many times do you get a phone call at midnight, saying, 'Do you want to be in a TV show?' You should say yes to opportunities," he said.
The TV series became an immediate success when it was broadcast on Oct 1, 1994. Many people in China still recognize Daly for his role in the drama, rather than his current position as director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.
Daly remembered that Jiang Wen had encouraged him to pursue acting, but he did not want to, a decision he said was correct in retrospect.
The primary reason Daly cited was the fact that he didn't think himself a good actor, and there had not been many good roles for foreigners to play, except the Beijingers.
"So even if I wanted to pursue the path, that path didn't really exist," he said.
Pleasant free time
In the subsequent years, Daly traveled between China and the US, doing consulting, public lectures, media and TV productions, such as helping produce the Chinese version of Sesame Street.
Under the arrangement of the National Committee on US-China Relations, he even served as interpreter for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a reception in Washington in 1997 for visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
He also worked as the American director for the US-China Housing Initiative when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Yu Zhensheng, now a member of the standing committee of the Politburo, was China's construction minister.
Daly said he enjoyed the feeling of being free in those years.
In 2001, when the opportunity came for Daly to become the American director of the Hopkins Nanjing Center, a joint venture between Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and Nanjing University, he immediately took it. He ended up spending six years in Nanjing with his wife and two sons.
"It was a marvelous experience for me both personally and professionally," Daly said, describing the Chinese and American students in the program as a "wonderful, dedicated group".
Unlike some other US universities that went to China in recent years for executive education, the Hopkins Nanjing Center is more about bringing people together, having them live together for a year, and study each other's language, Daly said.
He called the Hopkins Nanjing Center a true cooperative partnership, even when the Chinese side and the US side sometimes strongly disagreed.
It was also an interesting time for Daly to live in China to witness the great transition.
He enjoyed working in China, particularly as a foreigner.
To Daly, the Chinese way of working has too much pressure and is depressing. Many of his Chinese friends worked so hard that they never took a vacation and never had their own time.
"You need your boss to leave you the hell alone after 5 o'clock, so you can go home to have your own life," Daly said. "That's what people need."
In 2007, Daly left Nanjing and returned to the US, a decision he said was made mostly for his children and parents. He wanted them to know each other. He also felt that China may not be a great place for children when they grow up because Chinese children don't really go out and play much.
In Daly's views, Chinese parents have defined success often in a narrow way. But he said that he and his wife, from China, actually complement each other in educating their three children, sons Isaac and Mateo, and daughter Claire.
Upon returning to the US, Daly spent another six years at the Maryland China Initiative at the University of Maryland. He praised the university for its capacity in bringing Chinese to Maryland for training. But he sighed that universities these days no longer provide China studies as a major.
In August 2013, Daly became director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States after its founder, Stapleton Roy, retired. Roy, born in China to missionary parents, was the former US ambassador to China whose brilliant thoughts on China and US-China relations are highly respected.
Daly again said he was quite fortunate and privileged to have this job. His understanding of Kissinger's vision is to have frank, informed and respectful dialogue aimed at keeping the relationship more cooperative than competitive, if possible.
"But you don't deny difficult issues," Daly said.
Genuine receptivity
"I believe strongly that we do have the ability on both sides and the expertise with people to manage this complicated, mutually beneficial and dangerous relationship successfully," he said. "That can be done."
He believes the US side needs to show genuine receptivity to China as a maker of norms and the builder of institutions.
"We saw a bad example of this in American opposition to the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank," Daly said. "I saw this as a very good opportunity for America to demonstrate the receptivity, to participate enthusiastically and to encourage others to participate, while saying, yes, we insist on transparency, respect environmental rules, labor protection."
On the other hand, Daly believes China is not good at proposing rules and proposes specific rules.
chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
(China Daily USA 12/19/2014 page14)
