Eli Marx at the 25th Chinese Bridge Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students Photo: Courtesy of Eli Marx

The monastery courtyard was quiet. The air was thin and cold. That night in Gannan, on the edge of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Eli Marx slept in the room of a 16-year-old monk.

They had spent the afternoon playing basketball together. The monk wore a faded Michael Jordan hoodie and carried an iPhone. After Marx returned to the US, the two kept talking on WeChat. The monk asked for a photograph of Marx's dorm room at Stanford. He wanted to know about the NBA - especially LeBron James and Stephen Curry, both of whom had Ohio ties.

"If I was just thinking who is the most different person in the world from me, a Tibetan monk is a good guess," Marx said later. "But I meet him and we're actually the same in so many ways."

Curious about each other

Marx, now 21, grew up in Bowling Green, Ohio, a town of about 30,000 people. He is a sophomore at Stanford University studying data science and East Asian studies. His path - from a Midwestern childhood shaped by "Made in China" labels to a monastery courtyard and the Chinese Bridge competition stage - offers a quiet measure of how some younger Americans are encountering China.

According to a Pew Research Center survey released in April 2026, 27 percent of Americans now hold a favorable view of China, up six percentage points from the previous year and nearly doubled since 2023. The shift is most visible among younger adults: About 34 percent of those under 50 view China favorably, compared with 19 percent of those aged 50 and older. 

Marx does not claim to represent his generation. Yet his experience illustrates what sustained curiosity can look like in practice. 

Before high school, he had almost no contact with Chinese people. His earliest impression of the country came from the small labels he hunted for around the house as a 6-year-old child. 

In 2019, he started studying at a private school in Toledo, where about 10 percent of the students were international boarders, including several from China. Meeting them turned an abstraction into something human. That same year, he began studying Chinese with a teacher who had grown up in China and later settled in Ohio.

Learning the language changed the texture of ordinary interactions. People opened up when they sensed genuine interest. Friendships followed. "You're curious about someone and they're curious about you. It's reciprocal," Marx said. "How else are you going to get out of all the things that are familiar?"

He has visited China five times - three times to the Chinese mainland and twice to the island of Taiwan. 

The trips took him through Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Beijing, Xi'an and several cities in Fujian Province. The most formative was a two-week road trip that began in Beijing and wound through Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hebei, Ningxia and Gansu provinces before ending on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau. Along the way he encountered the scale of modern infrastructure - highways, solar arrays and wind farms stretching across vast landscapes - which is difficult to convey to anyone who has never seen these sights firsthand. "From the Great Wall, built over millennia, to more than 50,000 kilometers of high-speed rail built in under two decades, you kind of get the same feeling," he said. China's high-speed rail network surpassed 50,000 kilometers in December 2025. For a student from the Midwest of the US, that physical magnitude left a lasting impression.

The monastery stay in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, remains one of his most memorable moments. The room was spare: a low bed, a small table, the faint scent of butter tea. The young monk spoke limited English, but basketball required little translation. They played until the light faded. After Marx left China, their WeChat conversations continued - ordinary exchanges about dorm rooms and basketball that somehow bridged a considerable distance.

Shared understanding

On Chinese platforms such as Bilibili and Rednote, Marx noticed more and more foreigners were starting to appear, watching and sharing their own content as the content often felt universal and familiar: "humor, daily life, thoughtful discussion and noise." 

Twenty years ago, many Americans' exposure to Chinese media was largely limited to China's Hong Kong kung-fu films. Today, ordinary phones with social media apps present ordinary lives.

At the 25th Chinese Bridge-Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students, a global contest for non-native speakers of Chinese, Marx won the Americas championship and finished second overall. The 2026 final was held in Xiamen, Fujian, drawing 157 contestants from 139 countries. Preparing for the event, he even coded a small application to help him review classical poetry. The reasons young Americans study Chinese today, he observed, are more varied than those of a generation ago. Some are driven by academic or professional plans. Others arrive through internet culture, television dramas or games. His own motivation remains rooted in curiosity and human connection.

Among his peers, Marx senses growing interest rather than entrenched hostility. "Most people don't think in terms of negative and positive that often," he said. "But if we had to say it that way, I think definitely more and more positive - or at least more and more people would be curious about the daily life in China, Chinese technology, Chinese culture."

He returns to a simple conviction: Meeting people and paying attention to ordinary lives still expands the space for understanding.

Since the launch of the initiative of inviting 50,000 young Americans to China for exchange and study programs over a five-year span in November 2023, over 50,000 young Americans have visited China, achieving the target two-and-a-half years ahead of schedule, said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on May 29. Marx's story is only one data point among thousands. 

But it suggests that a generation starting from "Made in China" labels is beginning, in some cases, to look past the products and the headlines toward the people on the other side. 

"You're really curious about people and you get to meet people and you learn about their experiences. I think the goal is to bring everyone closer together," he said.

From a small Ohio town to a monastery courtyard and a competition stage in Xiamen, Marx's path shows that sustained curiosity can still travel farther than expected.