THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY AUGUST 2024 75 After some 45 years, I still find them turning up. Mementos the People’s Republic of China airline had given us: small ceramic pandas, nail clippers with an airline logo, and lapel pins with a golden profile of Chairman Mao. I was awarded these gifts while commuting from Hong Kong to Beijing during the late 1970s. There was no American embassy in Beijing, just a tiny diplomatic enclave called a Liaison Office. At that time, there were no direct flights between the two cities. You could take the train or the hovercraft on the Pearl River for the 40-mile journey to Guangzhou and then take a train or plane to Beijing. On the flight a cheerful attendant in a baggy uniform poured tea from a large, dented, blackened metal kettle. She would return with your snack—stewed chicken feet, pickled cabbage, or a similar delicacy … and the souvenirs. b The Liaison Office in Beijing (USLO) was a drab two-story structure about the size of a Denny’s restaurant with a comparable staff. It did not look like Diplomats, Firecrackers, and a Checker Cab: The Opening of U.S. Embassy Beijing BY DON HAUSRATH REFLECTIONS Don Hausrath entered the U.S. Information Agency as a Foreign Service librarian in 1971. He retired in 1995 with the rank of Counselor after opening U.S. Information Service libraries in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Russia. the outcome of delicate negotiations between key players in the 20th century. There had been many secret meetings before USLO was born. Henry Kissinger once “disappeared” for a weekend in Pakistan to meet in Beijing with Mao Zedong. Later, in 1972, came what my Tokyo paper called the Nixon Shokku. Incredible at the time, Nixon and Mao had initialed declarations that the two nations would work together toward “normalization of relations.” At a followup meeting, Chinese Premier Chou Enlai invented the concept of a “liaison office,” which allowed a handful of American and Chinese diplomats to work in each other’s capitals long before all the details of the regular give-and-take between nations could be established. Thus, two not-quite-embassies opened, both governments sending some of their most talented diplomats. These pioneers were to struggle for six years in a bureaucratic no-parking zone, eyed suspiciously by their host governments, spied on, phones tapped, and travel strictly controlled. I commuted to USLO for a few years, still forbidden territory to all but a handful of Americans. I was there for a mundane reason. The now-defunct U.S. Information Agency I worked for believed the best way to work with a foreign country was to let its people Children of U.S. Liaison Office staff members sing “God Bless America” at the opening of U.S. Embassy Beijing on March 1, 1979. COURTESY OF DON HAUSRATH
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