"Music is the Best Connector"
Visit to Shanghai Xiaolongbao Restaurant
U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, after completing his visit to China, unexpectedly stopped by a record store in Beijing and purchased albums by American pop star Taylor Swift.
On the 27th (local time), major foreign media reported that after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping the previous day, Secretary Blinken was heading to the airport when he suddenly turned towards a record store located in the 798 Art District, an arts street in Beijing.
He bought Taylor Swift's 2022 album Midnights and an album by Chinese rock singer Dou Wei. It is reported that during this visit, he mentioned that Swift's music, including her 2014 album featuring the fifth studio album Bad Blood, is one of America's major exports.
Top American pop star Taylor Swift's 2019 album Lover broke records in China by surpassing one million combined streams, downloads, and album sales within a week of its release, setting a new record for foreign artists in China. It was considered the most consumed foreign full-length album in China over a short period.
Foreign media interpreted Secretary Blinken's actions as part of efforts to improve U.S.-China relations. Earlier, the U.S. State Department cited expanding people-to-people exchanges as one of the purposes of Blinken's visit to China.
Secretary Blinken is known to be a music enthusiast. He plays the guitar, composes music, and occasionally performs in a band named after himself. He said that music is "the best connector regardless of geography" and that he likes LP records because of the included liner notes.
Earlier, on the first day of his visit to China on the 24th, Blinken's visit to a restaurant in Shanghai also attracted attention, according to the U.S. New York Times (NYT). Some posts on Chinese social media encouraged trying Xiaolongbao (steamed soup dumplings).
However, the NYT assessed that compared to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s food diplomacy in China, which attracted significant attention from Chinese state media Global Times, the interest in Secretary Blinken was relatively lower.
Meanwhile, Swift generates economic effects in every city where she performs, to the extent that the term “Swiftonomics” has been coined in the U.S. Last year, her The Eras Tour alone generated record-breaking revenue exceeding $1 billion (approximately 1.3769 trillion KRW).
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