Nixon And Mao (2007)
“THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE visit, Chou En-lai invited Nixon, as the Chinese always did special guests, to a banquet given in his honor at the Great Hall of the People, that monstrous Stalinist structure that ran along one side of Tiananmen Square. Banquets, toasts, the exchange of gifts—all have been part of diplomacy as far back as anyone can remember. The Chinese Communists took such protocols as seriously as their predecessors had. “Their whole idea,” said Winston Lord, Kissinger’s assistant who... would later return to China as the American ambassador, “is to inculcate in outsiders coming to the Middle Kingdom a sense of obligation for their hospitality and friendship. In effect, they seek to create ties of alleged friendship. They want us to feel that friends do favors for other friends.”1 The Americans—all of them, from the President and Mrs. Nixon to the crew of their aircraft—gathered in the foyer of Nixon’s villa at the Diaoyutai, along with Chinese protocol people and translators, before the motorcade took them into the center of the city.MoreLess
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