The Art of Gathering

Eva Woo

The show, called “Ear to the Common Ground,” brings diverse Americans together to discuss polarizing topics over dinner and music. I participated as a discussant or “dinner guest” on the first episode about immigration. The show was recorded in a historic barn in Nashville last May, and featured my friend the incredible musician Wu Fei.

Eventually, the show will be on over half of PBS stations in the U.S., starting this week, and our episode is the first one to be shown!

I invite you to check it out here where you’ll see a few other guests and I discuss immigration issues over a potluck dinner and musician Wu Fei’s music. As you’ll see, I might have been the “controversial” one by bringing up the unpopular idea of the unfairness of illegal immigration early on.

Let me share some of my thoughts and observations on my experience with the production, a novel format of convening and connecting people, a musician you might find interesting, the comfort food I shared at the event, and a bit more about my views on immigration.

The Art of Gathering

The idea behind Ear to the Common Ground is to bring American people together to listen to each other with compassion and love (love for each other, love of food and music) in an age of polarization.

The format is engaging as it was set up as a potluck dinner convened by an accomplished and one-of-a-kind musician. In our case, it was my friend Wu Fei, who recommending the guests. Wu had just performed at the Kennedy Center right before our gathering.

I found the format to be very clever. I had heard the book author of “The Art of Gathering” talking about the miracle and wonders specific formats of conversations and deliberate curation can work to dissolve conflicts and bring people with very different opinions together to truly hear and connect on a deep level. Now the formula of The Art of Gathering had another secret ingredient: music! What’s lovely about this added ingredient is that the shared appreciation of a musician has a connecting power that goes beyond words — in which problems from misinformation to misinterpretation exist.

Side note: I am looking forward to experimenting with similar formats this year at events here in Silicon Valley with a local nonprofit, The Society of Heart’s Delight (SHD), which I am involved as an advisor and volunteer. Stay tuned!

Musician Wu Fei

Wu Fei is a classically trained composer, a renowned master of the guzheng — the 21-string Chinese zither — and a vocalist. She has taken her music around the world, appearing at such venues as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in D.C., and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing.

I first heard her music on a podcast and found out about her collaboration piece with Abigail Washburn, in fact the whole album was awesomely unique, and gave me goosebumps. Wow. The two put together folk songs in two distinctly different cultures and spin out such a harmonious blend. Who would have thought bluegrass and traditional Chinese string (Guzheng) could go together like peanut butter and jelly ;) . Or rather, they are like a pair of twins in two parallel universes.

My husband and I first met Fei on our family’s cross country trip as we moved from DC to the Bay Area in 2017. She and her family had just moved to Nashville from Beijing. Her husband Jeremy was an old contact in the foreign news media reporter and China watcher world of Beijing. Wu Fei and I shared some similar experiences being caught in transition, and being caught in the fusion of cultures we live in, so we hit off and felt a kinship. I have continued to follow her and have been stunned by her creative energy — for a while on daily basis she sent out a short piece of music accompanied by a narrative, almost like a music blog of sort.

Her music makes me homesick, esp her Ping Tan pieces — it is a Chinese musical tradition that combines vocal narratives and instruments for storytelling. It is from Suzhou (near Shanghai in eastern China), where my father and mother’s families are from, but it is at another level because you hear a twist to it that adds a novel and cosmopolitan spin. Those are songs for restless, adventurous souls that crave comfort by the sound of home The Potluck Dish- Jambalaya

One of the features of the event was that each guest brought a food dish. I decided to bring jambalaya, a Cajun dish from New Orleans. I brought my favorite Cajun sauce on the plane and made the dish at my friend’s house in Nashville hours before the dinner.

I chose jambalaya because it unexpectedly resembles a comfort food I had many, many times as a child to a Shanghainese mom, the savory congee (xian pao fan咸泡饭), in which you throw in leftovers from the last day with cooked rice and water in a pot.

Just like the Guzheng and the bluegrass fusion music Wu Fei created with Abigail Washburn, Shanghainese savory congee and jambalaya are to me also like twin sisters in two parallel universes. Both are tasty, and both are down-to-the-earth comfort food that makes you homesick; as a Chinese American moving to America as a grownup, both are my favorite comfort foods.

With rice, meat, and veggies thrown in together, the other thing about jambalaya is that it is a perfect embodiment of the melting pot idea of America. It is an ultimate fusion dish with French, African, and Spanish influences. So I felt it was a symbolic dish to bring to the event. Not to mention that it’s really tasty!

On immigration — the view of a new immigrant

I am all for immigration. Me and most of my friends are beneficiaries of the American ideal of welcoming new immigrants. America should be the destination of the brightest and most driven people of the world, period.

However, if America was founded on an idea and a set of values, then the members of its society should be capable of holding those ideas and values. It should be “merit-based” and lawful (as laws were set for reasons)- at least with respect to the new entrant group the country can control — immigrants.

I immigrated legally, a process that took strenuous effort and lengthy processing. So when I hear about individuals who disregard the rules around immigration and tolerate the illegal crossing of borders, I get frustrated about the violation of fairness principles.

It is one thing to extend humane support toward refugees, and immigrants brought here as children. Genuine asylum seekers should be allowed just like our church doors are open to the homeless. But illegal behavior and fraud should not be tolerated.

This is not just about illegal border crossings. I am also concerned about outright fraud. I know from personal experience that many people gamed the system, and agents who know how to exploit the system made money at the cost of average American citizens who work hard and pay taxes. I have encountered Chinese immigrants who bought their way in through agents specializing in immigration through “political asylum.”

But- I understand it is a complicated topic, that needs to be unfolded properly another time to avoid misinterpretation. It is the beginning of the new year, so let’s take a break and be brief here.

Again, my point is just like jambalaya and Wu Fei’s music, immigration should be carefully curated if we want to make a country of ultimate fusion and ultimate innovations.

To use the cooking analogy, it should be a melting pot with the right chemistry happening with the right ingredients complementing each other. Like cooking, it should follow some basic principles, not a random and laissez fair process.

Happy New Year! I hope 2023 improves for all of us and that we listen to each other with compassion and love more.