America in a Chinese Salon

I just got a haircut from a local salon (3 dollars well spent). I went by myself so my broken Chinese and their broken English didn't allow for much communication. Pointing and gesturing, which makes up over 75% of my communication with the local Chinese, got me through the experience.

Anyway, the thing that struck me was when one of the barbers depicted Iraq and America with his hands. He traced the trajectory of a missile into Iraq while saying "Bush, Bush very bad. Obama, Obama very good" (At the time, it sounded more like "Beyush, Beyush vary baa. Oyama, Oyama vary goo"). Of course, that's like me saying to a Chinese tourist in America "Communist Hu Jintao, censorship and pollution, very bad". It's a one-dimensional, inaccurate portrayal of an entire government and an entire country. However, the idea that America's one-dimensional caricature is defined by the Iraq war instead of freedom, democracy, academic opportunity, etc. caught me off guard. If you had to define America in a word or a phrase, what would it be? How would someone in Saudi Arabia or China answer that question? I doubt the two responses would bear any resemblance to each other, but it seems like our job (by our, I mean not only the government but also our generation) is to fix that image and to fill the gap.

Of course, most of the conversation (or attempted conversation, I should say) wasn't political or serious at all. My barber did a Michael Jackson dance move and mentioned Lady Gaga. One of the other barbers pointed out my arm hair, and my barber proudly pulled down his V-neck shirt to display his chest hair. The other barbers crowded around to make fun of my broken Chinese among themselves (I heard a bunch of sentences with Meiguoren, or Americans, even though I couldn't understand them). The experience was great, all of us were laughing at the other side's attempt to speak Chinese or English, but it gave me much food for thought.