Former ambassador Nicholas Platt: “One of the things that strikes me is that most of the literature and the music and the philosophy and so forth are very practically oriented, directed toward the solution of problems, the description of events, or program music with pictures of moonlight on water. You know the routine. And it’s beautiful. But it’s not very abstract. And I think classical music has some appeal to the Chinese because of its abstractness. It may fill a hole in their needs. There are simpler explanations. They love grand things – big buildings and big bridges – and Western classical music is grand.”