Shifting between the old and new China

Author: Simon Toppin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: I walked through the lobby of the Quiet Dell Hotel and strode toward the Windsor Ballroom. There, I would give a speech on China to the members of the Rotary Club of New York (an international service organization—translator's note). I was filled with resentment toward the former executive of the advertising department of The New York Times, who insisted on making me face this noisy crowd. What should I talk about? Maybe I could share my wife's adventures in China to make them happy; or perhaps I could just read them the yellowed clippings I had collected 20 years ago. As I thought this, my spirits lifted somewhat.
On May 13, 1971, my wife, Audrey, sent me a cable from China after visiting for a week with her diplomat father. She wrote, "Chou En-lai says you can come to China." The Chinese Premier asked me to contact Xu Changfu (transliteration), the acting chargé d'affaires at the Chinese Embassy in Pan-Pacific. At the time, I was the deputy editor-in-chief of The New York Times. Since receiving Audrey's cable, I couldn't help but call the Chinese Embassy in Canada every day, and each time they said they had not yet received the visa approval from Beijing. I was very worried that something might go wrong and prevent me from returning to Chinese soil.
Over the years, I had longed to see again those familiar villages, those small houses with earthen walls, those fields of green and brown stretching toward the horizon, and those cities that everywhere showed the irresistible energy of a people unlike any other. I had witnessed with my own eyes the revolution that took place on that land—500 million people fiercely breaking free from feudal constraints; I had crossed the vast plains littered with the bodies of war; I had talked with surviving peasant soldiers on their knees, recording their pain, grief, and hope. To follow that revolution, I had immersed myself completely in the turmoil, the outpouring, the cruelty, and the ecstasy. Witnessing the tremors of that society as it alternated between failure and victory, and its shuffling steps at the beginning of change, had given me many insights; before the face of dreams and reality, I had gained a rougher understanding and a touch of maturity.
Later experiences—whether reporting on the war in French Indochina