Passage 1 Thank you, Mr. Bishop, Assistant Vice Minister Li, Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries President Lu Qiutian, and Vice President Li Xiaolin, All China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese Vice President Tang Wensheng, distinguished guests representing the People’s Republic of China, your excellencies and other colleagues in the diplomatic corps, honored guests, friends and my fellow Americans. // This year, as you can see, our focus is on the great American state of Florida. I wish to thank the terrific American companies that have joined us in sponsoring today’s event. Sarah and I hope that you will join us in enjoying their fine products. I also want to thank acting administration consular Terry Wong and his team for organizing and decorating for today’s event. // Over the long Independence Day holiday in the United States, many of the visitors to Washington are driving into nearby Virginia to visit the home of George Washington, Mount Vernon. Others are traveling a short distance farther along the same highway to visit the home of his neighbor, George Mason. Mason’s home is called Gunston Hall. // These neighboring Virginia farmers are now recognized as two of the leading men of the founding generation. George Washington University in the District of Columbia honors our first president. A few miles away in Virginia is George Mason University. A visit to Gunston Hall is rewarding. It is a brick building in the early Georgian style of the eighteenth century. A modern visitor is delighted to find that Mason chose to decorate one of the rooms in what was then the Chinese style, or "Chinoiserie. " There he and his wife displayed some Chinese plates and vases. // The walls were painted with what English decorators then imagined to be scenes of China. You can also see this same style in the diplomatic entrance foyer off the south entrance to the white house. What do these items in Mason’s "Chinoiserie" room tell us They show that the trade between china and Europe in the reign of Emperor Qianlong had reached America. They demonstrate how Chinese art, then as now, exerted a powerful influence on the western imagination. But they also tell us that while Americans knew something of china and the wonders of its civilization, there was not yet much contact between China and America. // What did George Mason and others of his generation know of China That china was a powerful and wealthy civilization. That it pioneered such innovations in government as the civil service examinations. But no doubt they also knew that china under the Manchus faced severe problems, especially from arbitrary rule and corruption. These were problems that Americans of the time knew at first hand because they faced similar problems as a colony. // Mason’s contribution to American independence was the drafting of the Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted by the state of Virginia just three weeks before the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence. It guaranteed the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness and safety. // Please join me in an Independence Day toast. To President Hu and President Bush. May the friendship and mutual understanding between china and the United States continue to expand and prosper not only to the benefit of our two great nations and peoples but also to the benefit of all nations and peoples. And, may human dignity and liberty flourish. // (Excerpts from the speech presented to the guests of the July 4th Celebration by Clark T. Randt, Jr, former US Ambassador to China in Beifing on July 4th, 2004)