Word: lai
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...American standards, the capital airport is almost deserted only half an hour before the President touches down. Where are Chou En-lai and the palace guard? Around, say the Chinese officials, but not in sight. Finally, from behind some buildings come the sound of troops. Rhythmic marching, hard boots, the shout of a command...
People's Daily front-pages a picture of Mao and Nixon. Nixon and Chou En-lai confer privately for four hours. Evening at the ballet...
There is the feeling that Henry Kissinger and Chou En-lai put it all down on paper months ago, then stamped their chops on the agreement, shook hands and just waited for the actors to come onstage and do their parts...
Some of that all-or-nothing fervor is fading as the pragmatists take over and ideology dwindles. A Secretary of State such as John Foster Dulles, who could not bear to shake the hand of China's Chou En-lai in 1954, has been replaced by a Nixon, who seems able to embrace anyone and any idea if it looks historically or politically profitable. Few modern leaders have turned themselves about so completely as has Nixon to meet what seems to him the practical demands of the times. Pragmatism, in fact, is fast becoming America...
Deprived of the customary briefings and backgrounders, correspondents were forced to fall back on color and trivia, including the length of Mao's handshake with Nixon and the width of Chou En-lai's grins as portents of how the talks were going. Conservative Columnist William F. Buckley Jr. fumed about the low-key reception and grumbled that the sole Chinese concession seemed to be that "they did not make President Nixon stop for red lights." Buckley eventually suggested in print that some slight was also intended because Chou drank "to the health" of President Nixon instead...