I see the power of music to connect cultures. I see it when I stand on a stage at a bluegrass festival … and I bust out into a song in Chinese, and everybody's eyes just pop wide open.

Washburn frames music as a practical, lived form of intercultural translation rather than an abstract ideal. By describing a bluegrass-festival audience reacting to a Chinese song, she highlights how performance can puncture expectations and momentarily dissolve the sense of “us” and “them.” The “eyes pop wide open” image suggests surprise that quickly becomes attention and receptivity—an embodied recognition that unfamiliar language can still carry emotion, rhythm, and communal energy. The quote also reflects her artistic identity as a bridge figure: rooted in an American folk tradition while drawing on Chinese language and experience to expand what that tradition can hold.