The other day I began dismantling my sculpture displayed at the Studio Without Walls show in the Riverway Park, Brookline. As I started to loosen bolts, I noticed an older man standing nearby and staring at me. I said hello and we began to chat, using his mobile phone translator app. It turns out that he lives in China and is in Boston to visit his son, who is a student at Harvard Medical School. He asked me lots of questions about my piece — “Monument to Lost Gloves’’ — and I asked him questions too (he’s a landscape painter). He offered to help me load the heavy steel pieces into my car. I gladly accepted, and we got things loaded in short order. I thanked him, gave him a hug, and took a photo of the two of us.

The recent warning by the Chinese government questioning the safety of its citizens in the United States left me very concerned. The trade tensions created by President Trump’s policies add to that suspicion and further divide us. We need more Chinese students, business people, scholars, families, artists, and the like to visit the United States. And we need to reciprocate in kind. My brief encounter with this visitor from China affirmed the essential value of human connection: talking with each other, showing photos of our family (which I did), sharing a laugh, and having an old Chinese man lighten the load of an old American man.

Allen M. Spivack

Jamaica Plain