Postcards From the Middle Kingdom, No. 4

SHANGHAI: We've learned that Jiang Zemin disclosed to President Clinton during a private dinner in Beijing that he knows all the dialogue to "Stagecoach," the John Wayne movie. It's not that he'd even ever seen the movie, but his English teacher really loved it and made his students study the script.

Somewhat of a record was finally ended today. Mike McCurry during a regular briefing finally got his first question about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He was asked whether it was appropriate that Ken Starr put Linda Tripp on the stand while Clinton was out of the country. Of course he had no comment, but until then we'd been five days into the trip without a Lewinsky question.