Ling Ling: The US is a very different from China, but, like China, it is a place of very many differences. We have people here from all over the world who try hard to live together and learn from each other. Some times it is hard to do, but we keep trying. Your history is much older than ours and, like you, we like to tell the stories of our history. Some of these stories are about triumph and glory, the exploration of our West and our wonderful ability to make the machines of modern life and the great discoverys of our scientists. Some of the stories are not so pretty. They are the stories about the Native Americans, who were here before there was a US, and we tell about the time in our country when black people were kept as slaves. We learn from all these stories, at least some of us do. What makes the US, America, a wonderful place to live is we have the freedom to learn and change and also the freedom to be stubborn and stupid and thick in the head.
We hope to keep it that way.
I hope you can come to the USA someday and see our giant mountains and deserts in the West and our beautiful, vast green fields of wheat and corn and cotton. We have so many beautiful cities it is hard for me to say which ones you should see, Washington DC for sure, but also Boston and Atlanta and Dallas and Chicago and St. Louis and Denver and Albuquerque and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle. Whew! That's a lot. And there is so much to see that is not in the big cities, just like China. OH, I forgot my city...... New York. You must come to New York and meet with my wife and I. We will walk through a little bit of Central Park and then go shopping on Fifth Avenue. We'll go to the Museum of Art and see if they have any information on the Chinese Treasure Fleets of 1421. I just read about them. Very interesting. Then we'll go to a nice place for American food. Okay?
What else would like to know about?
Joe
I'm not trying to be unfair here. I inherited a whole bunch of Chinese cookbooks from my mother-in-law, to add to the lofty tomes I already owned, but there are still some things that are a mystery to me. 
