Li Xiaolin has had a front seat to the dramatically expanding cultural dialogue between China and the US, going back to the 1970s.

"At that time, because of the impressions left by movies, periodicals and reports on the Korean and Vietnam wars, the American people were villainized in my mind," said Li, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC).

"The images that I saw in movies at the time were of American soldiers with an olive branch of democracy and freedom in one hand, and talons of bombers of war in the other," she said.

Li spoke at the 22nd Washington seminar on US-China Relations, hosted by the US-China Peoples Friendship Association (USCPFA) at Gallaudet University in Washington on April 22.

She recalled her impression of 41 years ago, a stage in China-US relations when the countries' cultures were practically unknown to each other, with the exception of what movies and news stories told Chinese citizens of the Korean and Vietnam wars.

However, Li's view of Americans changed following her first encounter with them. Li started a career at the CPAFFC in 1975, three years after US president Richard Nixon's historic summit in China. The first delegation she welcomed to China was a group of American activists organized by USCPFA.

"After face-to-face interactions with my American friends, as it turned out, Americans were very kind, civilized and well-educated people," Li said.

These days, visits are much more frequent between the two countries. As Li pointed out, "Every 24 minutes, there is a flight taking off between our two countries. Each day, more than 10,000 people are traveling across the Pacific Ocean between our two great nations."

Cities in both countries have made efforts to unite. There are 45 pairs of sister states and 209 sister cities between China and the US.

Li believes that subnational-level exchanges can strengthen the countries' overall relationship.

"I think people-to-people diplomacy is the foundation of our operations, especially CPIFFC's long-term cooperation with USCPFA," she said. "State-to-state relations rely on people-to-people interactions between the two countries."

Allan Fong in Washington contributed to this story.