Word: mao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When Richard Nixon flew into Beijing on the morning of February 21, 1972, Mao Zedong was so thrilled, he wanted the U.S. President to come straight from the airport to meet him. Mao had been seriously ill for weeks: resuscitation equipment was hidden behind potted plants in his residence in case he collapsed during the meeting. The Chairman was fitted with a new Mao suit to conceal edematous bloating. That morning he had his first haircut in five months...
...Nixon was allowed to go from the airport to a guest bungalow, and to lunch with Premier Zhou Enlai. But then he was whisked to meet Mao, and the history books describe a meeting of civilizations that was as weird and awkward as it was historic. Mao and Zhou wanted to discuss the recent coup attempt by Lin Biao, Mao's chosen successor; Nixon didn't seem to understand them. He and Henry Kissinger flattered the Chairman. When Kissinger referred to Mao as a "professional philosopher," Mao laughed and asked, "He is a doctor of philosophy?" Nixon's reply...
...Chinese believe that natural disasters signal the fall of empires, a shift in the "Mandate of Heaven." The 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, for example, was said to portend the end of Mao's reign. This may be akin to seeing a fetus in the shape of a hurricane, but the Chinese do have a point: we have had two catastrophes in the past four years-9/11 and Katrina-and taken together, they send a signal that America's remarkable late-20th century run may not be perpetual. Modifications in the way we live...
...after 16 hours in the field each day, Dong stole away at night with a kerosene lamp to pore over two math and physics books his father had salvaged for him. Eventually the authorities caught on to Dong's reading, but since he disguised his books to resemble Mao's Little Red Book, they praised his party fervor. That reputation gave him the rare chance to attend college, leave the fields and then leave China. "If you go through that," he says, "nothing else is difficult." Well, almost nothing. Dong was introduced to welding as a student at Harbin Institute...
...would pose "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere." Since then he has danced more carefully to Beijing's tune. Soon after his provocative comment, China's leaders insisted that he remove the BBC from Star TV's menu of channels after it aired a program critical of Chairman Mao Zedong. Murdoch complied, and has gone further since. On his orders, News Corp.'s publishing arm, HarperCollins, dropped a book written by Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last British Governor, in which Patten was critical of Beijing. In 1999 Murdoch even derided the Dalai Lama, Beijing's longtime...