The Chinese seem to feel that news, like eggs, improves with age. At any rate, the story was nine days old when it was bannered across Page One of every paper in Peking last week. CHAIR MAN MAO ENJOYS A SWIM IN THE YANGTZE, read the identical headlines. At an annual swimming meet on July 16 in the city of Wuhan, the 72-year-old "greatest leader of the people of the world" had trod "firmly" down the gangplank of a motor launch in the Yangtze, "with glowing ruddy cheeks and in buoyant spirits." There, in the presence of "tens of...
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