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In downtown Peking's Tiananmen Square, the ritualistic rhythms clicked into high gear. A mob of choreographed schoolchildren waved enormous paper flowers toward the Reagans and chanted, in Chinese, "Welcome, welcome—warm welcome!" Across the square, crack drill squads of army, navy and air force troops stood at attention, bayonets fixed, and a People's Liberation Army unit fired off a 21-gun artillery salute. But the most intriguing welcoming committee had been pushed by police 300 yards back across Chang An Avenue to the perimeter, beyond Reagan's view: thousands of ordinary Chinese, most of them young, who had come out on their own to glimpse the visiting American. It was the largest such spontaneous gathering for a foreign visitor that observers could recall.
Inside the Great Hall of the People, to which he would return half a dozen times, Reagan met with Li Xiannian, his nominal counterpart. It was a largely ceremonial meeting with a largely ceremonial Chinese President, but the chat provided a bright diplomatic omen: the men spoke for 35 minutes, several times as long as had been allotted.
Reagan started with a classic Reagan line: "A lot of problems disappear when we talk to each other," he said, "rather than about each other." Then he turned even sweeter, more avuncular. "One had only to look at the beautiful children we saw outside," Reagan told Li, "to know that our job as leaders is to deliver a better world to them than the one we found. That is what we are all here for." Replied Li, who is 78: "You said it very well. It is for the older generation to work for a better world."
Yet during the chat, Li did not shy away from mentioning the "obstacles" to international harmony—Peking's basic euphemism for U.S. support of Taiwan. All weekend the Chinese rulers would allude to that lingering obstacle. They seemed determined that no one, American or Chinese, get carried away with the effervescent bonhomie of the moment.
The heart of the visit came on Friday and Saturday. Reagan talked formally with Chinese leaders for some seven hours over the two days, most of that time around a conference table in a chamber of the Great Hall of the People. At Friday's sessions more than a dozen officials from each country faced each other across an expanse of green felt. Feisty, hard-line Hu Yaobang hectored Reagan about supposed American misapprehensions of Chinese foreign policy. The chemistry between the two, admitted one U.S. official "was not all that terrific." Nevertheless, Reagan was handing out invitations to visit Washington as if they were jelly beans, and Hu accepted his. The three hours of discussions with Premier Zhao, whom Reagan met in Washington in January, were unusually fast-paced. More than once the interpreters could not keep up with the conversation. "These two men are clearly comfortable with each other," said one State Department official. A White House adviser practically swooned about the encounter. "The meeting was extraordinary," he said. "It went exceedingly well, much better than I expected."