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At that time, Chou En-lai was only 43 years old. His job, as scout in the tower for Mao Tse-tung, was to keep contact with the outside world. Later, that assignment would make him Foreign Minister, then Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China. What set Chou apart from the other Communist Chinese leaders was that he was, by education, a larger man; and by temperament, an elastic man. He could fight ruthlessly—but he could give up hatred, which made him unique among Communists. He had, for example, in 1945, pleaded with friends at the American Embassy to be allowed to fly to the U.S. to visit Franklin Roosevelt and explain the revolution to him; he had been turned down. He had helped design the Geneva conference of 1954, which temporarily halted the Vietnam war. But at Geneva, when he extended his hand in friendship to American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Dulles humiliated him in public, refusing to shake the proffered hand. It was probably the most expensive display of rudeness by any diplomat anywhere, ever. Chou became a dedicated enemy of American diplomacy for many years; yet it was Chou who swung Mao's mind to accepting once more the bridge to America that he and Nixon built together. If that bridge endures in peace, it will be Chou's greatest contribution to both peoples.
This world eminence was far in the future when I first knew him. I do not know whether he was trying to persuade me, and through me, TIME magazine, that Chiang's government was a useless one and the Communists were the wave of the future; or whether he was simply enjoying educating me. One day he was explaining a particularly intricate point of Chinese politics and I interrupted to finish his sentence, which was rude. But he laughed and said that now I was on the threshold of beginning to understand the country. I was flattered; I do not know how many times Chou said this to foreigners, but I am told that his ultimate flattery of Secretary of State Kissinger was to tell him that he, too, was finally beginning to understand China.
Our personal relationship ended when he returned to Communist headquarters in Yenan in 1943. I saw him again and again in the years 1944 and 1945, but I would rather remember Chou the last two times I saw him, on the occasion of Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972.
The first glimpse was in Peking's Great Hall of the People, at a banquet. The American journalists sat at the far rear of the hall which reputedly seats 10,000. When President Nixon rose to circle the innermost ring of tables of the mighty, I headed for the big table where Chou En-lai sat next to Mrs. Nixon. I was abruptly stopped by agents of our American Secret Service as well as Chinese security. Both Chou En-lai and Mrs. Nixon, next to him, saw my predicament simultaneously. Perhaps they were bored with their conversation, for I do not think that Patricia Nixon and Chou En-lai had much in common to discuss. Simultaneously both waved to their agents to let me through, and each tried to explain to the other why they had beckoned to me. Chou Enlai, his English by now rusted away, could only say that I was "old friend, old friend." pointing at me. And she, believing that I had approached to talk with her, was saying the same thing. For two or three minutes, I