Word: tienanmen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...being repainted; a new 17-story wing of the Peking Hotel was being completed; a spectacular fireworks display was being readied. There were even rumors that Mao himself would make one of his rare public appearances to take his place on the reviewing stand in Peking's immense Tienanmen Square and preside over the festivities...
...White House refused to confirm any details, it was certain that Premier Chou En-lai would meet Nixon at the airport, and TV screens then would record a strange sight: Nixon, the champion of capitalism, riding with Chou in an official black Hongchi (Red Flag) car and entering Tienanmen Square. There they would pass the ancient scarlet walls of China's imperial past and the Gate of Heavenly Peace, from which Chairman Mao Tse-tung in 1949 proclaimed the birth of the People's Republic...
...past, is the struggle for and exercise of power. The gardens and yellow-roofed pavilions of the fabled Forbidden City recall the might of Peking's earlier proprietors, the Mings and the Chings. The Communists have added their own monuments: tree-lined boulevards, the hundred-acre Tienanmen Square and the white-pillared Great Hall of the People, where the Nixons will likely be welcomed in a banquet room that seats 5,000 and rivals the old Imperial Palace in size...
...date on the Chinese calendar is more sacred than Oct. 1, when Peking celebrates the final triumph of Mao Tse-tung's army over the Nationalists in 1949. But last week, for the first time in 22 years, there was no lavish National Day banquet, no parade through Tienanmen Square, no ringing editorials, no pecking-order appearance by Chairman Mao and the Chinese leadership atop the massive Gate of Heavenly Peace. For the watching world, there was also no explanation-only occasional half-hearted denunciations by Radio Peking of what it mocked as "rumormongering by the capitalists and revisionists...
...Early last week Chinese TV viewers were urged to tune in, please, for "an important news program" to be aired next day. But the promised telecast was postponed twice, and when the big announcement came at midweek, it only deepened the mystery: like the Tienanmen parade, the great state banquet, which is always hosted by Premier Chou En-lai on the eve of National Day, would also be scrapped. Instead, a perfunctory reception took place that was notable for the absence of any Chinese officials higher in rank than doddering old Vice Chairman Tung...