(2 of 6)
The city materializes. There are people in blue waiting for buses or looking. Nobody waves. There has been no organized welcome, no cymbals and drums. Past the Gate of Heavenly Peace, painted red except for its weathered orange tiles. Past the Great Hall of the People and the Hotel of Nationalities. Opposite the guesthouse is a terrace for fishing. The lake is frozen now, but a small pavilion with a two-tiered green-tiled roof juts above the ice. It is the classic moon-viewing site for composing poems, sipping wine, watching the willows on the shoreline and contemplating nature and man.
Yet this is hardly the Utopia of a beautiful pastoral people described by recent visitors. Construction materials abound on the main streets of Peking. Straw mats shield new buildings. It is a backward, proud country struggling furiously to grow and improve. -
The silence of this city is overwhelming. It is the dominant note of Richard Nixon's first day in Peking. The huge, roaring, dazzling spectacle of the presidency that has mesmerized whole nations is simply swallowed up in China. It is muffled, shrouded, forced into surrealism. Peking is silent at dawn. It is hushed at noon. If there is a rush hour, it is imperceptible. Reporters huddle in the cold on the steps of the Great Hall waiting—one hour, two hours. What is wrong? Nixon ill? Trouble in Viet Nam? This sort of void in awareness does not happen in this age. But it does. Of course, Nixon has slipped away to meet with Mao Tse-tung, the Mount Rushmore of China, and for that matter of the world.
Presidential Press Secretary Ron Ziegler emerges now and then from the void and says nothing. He will not comment on the health of Mao, the tone of the meeting, even how long the two shook hands. It remains one of the most remarkable such meetings on record. Richard Nixon has bragged before about the number of hours he has spent with heads of state. This time he flew 11,510 miles and so far he has had one hour with the top guy. That boils down to half an hour of talk. Is that enough to start this historic chain of events going that Nixon talks about so much? Maybe. But there is also the sense that the President has come to China to kowtow.
There is a Nixon off there somewhere. There is a glimpse at the Great Hall in the afternoon as he goes to the meeting with Chou Enlai. Then there is a banquet at night. While Americans watching on television get the idea that it is some kind of folk festival, it is not quite so hearty. The huge hall engulfs the guests, much like China itself. Nixon is a dim figure with Chou, nibbling at his shark's fin dish and supping his almond junket. Pat's red dress is a drop of warm blood in the gray.
The toasts are a traditional exercise and Nixon makes the most of it. Seized by this emotional moment, Nixon visits each of the top tables, toasting each Chinese official with a clink, a touch of his glass to his lips. For the Americans there, it is a moving moment. There is the suspicion that the Chinese like it too. But who really knows? The night and the silence swallow everybody again. The visitors go back to their hotels in buses, passing shadowy figures on bicycles, a thin moon shining through the cold. Nixon goes off somewhere and that immense silence closes in again.
Second Day