Intercultural Communication professor grateful to help shape China’s burgeoning IC discipline

Personal and academic home

In the summer of 1981, after teaching for two years in Taiwan’s Tunghai University, Steve first set foot on the Chinese mainland. His two-week-long journey ended with a three-day stay in Shanghai. The many factories, busy workers, clanging of bicycle bells, and busses full of people were his first impressions, but also signs of the new opening-up policy, with some colorful clothes appearing among the traditional blue and grey Mao suits, the first big billboard advertisements (surprisingly of “The Marlboro Man”), and a few shiny imported motorcycles and cars.

(Steve has an interview with Eastday.com)

Though China’s reform and opening up had started, in Steve’s eyes, Shanghai did not change very much in the 1980s. Developments took off after Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour, just before the Kulich family moved to SISU. High-rise buildings and overpasses quickly began springing up. Coal burning factories were moved out, construction of new housing or office areas became omnipresent and he saw a new Manhattan taking shape.“Everything was just picking up, and we had this sense that we could be part of this developing city and somehow contribute,” said Steve.

（Steve and his wife in the 1980s. Photo provided by Steve J. Kulich）