76 JULY AUGUST 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL learn as much as possible about our government and our culture. I was helping Chinese librarians, long isolated from all things Western, gain access to U.S. information. b A white USLO Toyota van picked me up at the old Beijing airport and dropped me at the Peking Hotel. I did not have a choice. One did not go hotel or apartment hunting; housing needs were handled by the PRC’s Diplomatic Services Bureau. In their own good time, they would send someone to work for you or tell you where you could live. Many USLO officers waited in the Peking Hotel for weeks, or even months, during which a couple with several small children might be crammed into one room. The Chinese floor attendant kept the key to your room at a desk on each floor. She would open your door, let you in, and lock the door when you went out. But it wasn’t your key. The hotel staff could, and often did, walk into your room anytime. A young hotel employee once walked in on our USLO secretary. She was naked, heading for her bath. She shrieked. He yelled. The manager arrived. Our secretary was furious at this intrusion. But the manager took the employee’s side and chewed out our staffer for embarrassing an innocent young man. b The official limousine was a blackpainted, Kalamazoo-made Marathon Checker cab. George Bush, as the first chief of the USLO, lobbied unsuccessfully for a more imposing car, but the State Department allocated perks by the rank of the embassy, and “USLO Peking,” as it was referred to in official cables, was at the bottom of the list. Bush gave up the fight and sent an exasperated cable stating: “Send Checker, remove meter.” The pug-faced auto would also serve George Bush’s replacement, Ambassador Thomas Gates, a former secretary of defense under Eisenhower. It passed on to Gates’ replacement, Leonard Woodcock, a past president of the United Auto Workers, who tooled about the city in his non-union-made car. The Chinese staff at the Liaison Office all came and went on bicycles. George Bush and wife Barbara took to sporting about the Forbidden City area on their “Flying Pigeon” bikes. Driving through town, you became accustomed to amazing things strapped to the back wheel of a bike: chairs, desks, small sofas, and the occasional grown pig in a custom-made rattan cage bouncing before you. In the early days of USLO, besides the stampede of bicycles, you dodged oxen, donkeys, and the occasional three-wheeled truck. b Finally, the big day came. Twelve children bundled in parkas followed their teacher, Evie Sylvester, wife of the political counselor, to the front steps of the Liaison Office, facing a crowd of about 150 people. Sensing the drama of the occasion, there were no smiles, no waves to parents, no giggles. The iron-barred front of the compound was three deep in blue-coated Chinese, squeezed against the fence, watching the American flag rising up the pole, the first to fly over an official embassy in China since Dec. 24, 1949. J. Stapleton “Stape” Roy, the chargé at the new embassy, along with a special representative from President Jimmy Carter, Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal, snapped a new flag onto the ropes. Behind a massive brass lectern— its engraved Boxer rebellion history tactfully taped over—Roy stood before the children’s chorus, two of the children his own. “I attended the last Fourth of July party at an American embassy in the People’s Republic of China,” he recounted. “That was in 1949 in Nanking.” The son of missionaries, Roy was born in Nanking and spoke fluent Chinese like so many at the ceremony. He introduced Secretary Blumenthal, saying, “I particularly asked him to speak in English rather than the Shanghai dialect.” Still, Blumenthal did, indeed, start off in Chinese. His was another homecoming of sorts. Born in 1926 near Berlin, he, along with his family, escaped one step ahead of the Nazis; they ended up as refugees in China for eight years. To help Chargé J. Stapleton Roy helps untangle the old flag at the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing so a new one can rise over the embassy, March 1979. COURTESY OF DON HAUSRATH
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