My First Trip to China
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Mei Fong on My First Trip to China : Scholars, Diplomats and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China in the LA Review of Books.
EARLIER THIS SUMMER while helping tidy my father-in-law’s basement, I stumbled on a 1972 Newsweek copy headlined, “The China Nixon Will See.”
It was an enthralling, touching, and at times hilarious period piece. China was still very much closed off to the West, and Newsweek recounted tales by early visitors describing “a land without drug addiction or pollution, without crime or venereal disease; a land where there are no slums, no alcoholics and not even any bosses.”
