Letters From Peking. Michael Richardson

I started having severe pains in my tum one day after having spent the day before lugging heavy pieces of furniture around. I always remember Daddy refusing to let me carry heavy weights and muttering about my womb, but unless you do the work yourself here no one else will and I didn’t see what harm could be done. However the pains continued and the nurse thought I ought to be looked at much to my despair. They couldn’t find anything and I think I must have strained myself as they are slowly easing – though not fast enough with all the floor scrubbing and bending I have to do. The cook is a merry soul and as we have discovered that he has spent seven years with the Mongolians and six with the Russians it is small wonder his culinary powers are limited – I think when I have time he will be willing the learn some simple English dishes. We loved your letters about the power cuts and all your trials. Alas there are no tourist handouts here Mummy, and nothing at all along the lines the stuff you saw in the Communist shops in HK. The book shops contain nothing but the works of Mao, Lenin and Marx and thousands of propaganda pamphlets in Chinese – a few translations of Plato, Descartes and other western philosophers have appeared too in the last few weeks but they are snatched up the second they are put on the shelves. I’ll get you some things when we go down to HK for our mid-tour leave.

      THE BRITISH EMBASSY PEKING

      18 MARCH 1972 MJR

      For beleaguered diplomats in the Celestial City this last has been quite a month. We have had the visit of the imperialist boss Nixon and Britain and China have finally agreed after 22 years to exchange ambassadors. In an otherwise rather quiet city, two such events in such close succession are a great strain, and even veteran members of the foreign community have been seen to be suffering from the effects of so much drama.

      The Nixon visit which I started to report in my last letter started as it meant to go on. All diplomats were excluded from everything with the result that incredibly we did not clap eyes on the man, nor on his éminence grise, Kissinger, who is brilliantly suited to such an adventure. After chasing his car for the first day or two we gave up, and thereafter relied on journalists for reports of what was going on. However, although the diplomatic community had squeezed the juice of very many sour grapes, it has nevertheless been a momentous occasion. The front page of the People’s Daily of 27 February must have been the most sensational issue ever: pictures of Nixon meeting Mao and also greeting Chou En-lai at the airport. Thereafter you will have seen much more than we on your television screens. One of the ironies however is that the welcome etc. was so subdued that our impression was that the immense array of commentators did not have enough to say and were reduced to padding for hours of the television spectacular. Certainly in Tien An Men Square that Monday when Nixon arrived, the camera crewmen, on seeing the minimal reception, exclaimed ‘they’re not going to believe this’. There are many legends already about Nixon’s reaction when told by walkie talkie by his secret service men on the ground as the plane came into land that there was no crowd. There are many epic stories of the visit, some of which you will have read in the mileage of newsprint. My favourite is when Walter Cronkite, who is apparently America’s most famous commentator, was covering Nixon’s visit at the Great Wall and broadcasting live. It was snowing and exceedingly cold. He suddenly put his hand over the microphone and exclaimed ‘goddammit the batteries in my electric socks just ran out’ and then went on broadcasting.

      The banality of Nixon and his wife’s clichés surpassed belief! But perhaps they go down well in America. For all the absurdities it was a serious event and for fair reasons or foul has at least introduced a sense of reality into the relations of two major powers. The barbarians have been seen to kow-tow before the Dragon Throne. My favourite photograph is of Nixon eagerly greeting an impassive Chou En-lai as if to say ‘would you like to buy this car? We saw a little of the American journalists who covered the visit and who were housed in the Minorities Hotel which was immediately christened The Running Dog Hilton [the Chinese called the Americans and their allies ‘Imperialists and their Running Dogs’]. They had about 17 passes issued to them by the Chinese to get into their hotel and one had to give a password into the telephone if one wanted to speak to them. It was not clear who was being kept from whom.

      Needless to say the visit has dominated Peking small talk ever since: a great bore, but an interesting commentary on the different nationalities here. The Russians profess that it is a good thing, in sharp contrast to their propaganda from Moscow. When taxed with this discrepancy they disarmingly say ‘you should not believe all our propaganda’.

      The other main event has been our own exchange of ambassadors, meaning that this is your first letter from the British Embassy in Peking. ‘What’s in a name,’ said Shakespeare, and you may well ask. There is little to get euphoric about until we see the Chinese being less beastly to British citizens (4 still detained without trial for 5 years, and 3 not allowed to leave China), and other concrete proofs of the new ‘friendship’ which we all keep toasting each other about and welcoming. The agreement was signed after nearly a year’s hard negotiating last Monday, and we were afterwards entertained to dinner by the Minister who had handled the talks, the ultra-smooth Chiao Kuan-hua. It was a very amicable evening held, as was the signing, in the former embassy of the Austro-Hungarian empire, now a Foreign Office guest house, and rather fine; except that the exquisitely proportioned rooms were decorated by horrendous furniture. Much mao tai was drunk to celebrate the ‘developing relations between our two countries’ (what does this phrase really mean I wonder?) An interesting illustration of the Chinese mind was that during the dinner I casually said (because conversation at these affairs is hard going) that I thought it was a poor show that Roman Catholic foreign devils should be allowed to worship here and not Protestants (the oldest catholic church dating from the 15th century has recently been opened and mass celebrated for foreigners and a few showpiece ancient Chinese by a priest belonging to the rump of the Catholic Church who have severed links with Rome). The official nearest to me replied I thought rather impressively to the effect that he didn’t understand the complications of the Christian religion: one church was open and celebrating – wouldn’t that do? Why did I need a different one? So I thought no more about it – it had been a conversational gambit anyway. However, the next day Protocol Department (of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) rang us and a man present at the dinner said he hoped we had not taken anything amiss and would we please submit a list of those who wished to go to church and appropriate arrangements would be made. So there may be provision for our souls after all.

      Anyway, we now have a rather obviously temporary and hastily-erected sign outside the office saying British Embassy in Chinese and English; we have none of the right stationary or stamps; Mr Addis is delirious – it is what he most wants; our Chinese staff are rather proud and suddenly chatty. But revolutionary vigilance is still around. The weather has turned warmer and the PLA guards on our office and living compound have now changed from fur hats to caps. I greeted cheerily the ones at the office and said ‘is it nice to be wearing summer hats?’ They were absolutely horrified and exchanged panic-stricken glances, since they appear only to be trained how to cope with the courteous ‘how are you?’ which we usually greet them with.

      On the entertainment field we have been to sundry dinner parties and been suitably amazed at how the enormous number of different nationalities behave. Also the British have given a party (our parties are by far the most famous and popular in Peking) – this time a gambling evening at which I was the croupier for Roulette. We had blackjack, roulette, bingo and a couple of other things; maximum stake the equivalent of two and a half pence, and we fleeced the diplomatic community of about £80. It was most amusing.

      We have now visited the Great Wall, really an astonishment – snaking over great mountains for 2,500 miles; a beautiful drive for 60 miles out of Peking (one of only 2 roads on which you are allowed out of the city, and even on them you are not allowed to stop – the ambassador was arrested for two and a half hours the other day for stopping to look at a 15th century bridge, and lectured on the Chinese government’s graciousness in letting foreigners out of Peking to see the Wall and the Ming Tombs). The Wall faces the northern plains and you drive through wild gorges 40 miles out of Peking. At the Wall it is cold: the wind blows from Siberia and one can believe oneself at the pale of civilisation, which is what the Wall was for until the Manchu conquest of 1644. It was started in 400 BC and is a marvel. The Valley of the Ming Tombs, a great valley among the same stupendous mountains, is where