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Everywhere the Chinese appeared there was a horde of paparazzi-like newsmen. Reporters peered over the delegates' shoulders as they breakfasted on omelets and lunched on breast of chicken. They even checked the luncheon tips with waitresses (a precise 15%). After paying their first breakfast tab with a $100 bill, the Chinese began signing for everything. Through it all, the delegates managed resigned smiles and noncommittal answers. One mission member, noting the crowd of newsmen, said to TIME'S Mandarin-speaking David Aikman: "You can't avoid them, can you?"
The U.S. delegation faced an unusual diplomatic situation: how to deal with the Chinese when there are no diplomatic relations between Washington and Peking. "We shall be proper, polite, courteous," said U.S. Ambassador George Bush. "We will be discreet, fair and available." Both sides, in fact, tacitly look upon the U.N. delegation as China's unofficial embassy to the U.S. As one qualifiedly friendly gesture, the U.S. applied to the Chinese the same travel regulations that govern the movements of the Soviets. Delegates from other Communist countries that have no diplomatic relations with Washington, such as Cuba, Albania and Mongolia, must apply for special permission to travel more than 25 miles from Manhattan's Columbus Circle; the Soviets, and now the Chinese, merely have to notify the State Department 48 hours in advance that they intend to take such a trip.
To the distress of the U.S. mission, which considers it a matter of course for a country to include intelligence operatives among its diplomats, the FBI leaked word that Kao Liang, leader of the Chinese advance party, was a well-known Peking agent. Kao (whose name is pronounced Gow) was reported to have been booted out of India, Mauritius and Burundi for fomenting subversion while working for the New China News Agency. The charge may well be true, and at least one U.S. diplomat abroad affirms, "We know he is a spook," though the same accusation was equally applicable to every Chinese diplomat in Africa during the 1960s, when Peking's men were aiding insurgents everywhere.