1/15/87

HK:

A public citizen has written to say
that your analogy on p 745 of White
House Years should have been to the
"land surveyor," re Kafka's novel
"The Castle." I attach p. 745.

Otherwise, your book is "perfect."

Want to thank in general terms?

___ Sign attached

___ Do for staff reply only

___ Forget it

Rosemary

The Journey to Peking

745

joke that senior officials in Washington would probably not be able to
free so much time for the Second Coming.

Chou could also display an extraordinary personal graciousness.
When junior members of our party took ill, he would visit them. Despite the gap in our protocol rank he insisted that our meetings alternate
between my residence and the Great Hall of the People so that he
would call on me as often as I called on him. After we had settled on
Paris as our future point of contact, Chou nevertheless proposed that we
continue to use the Pakistani channel occasionally because "we have a
saying in China that one shouldn't break the bridge after crossing it."

On one occasion (in June 1972) I told him that the soldiers who stepped forward on the bridges connecting the various guest cottages made me feel like the surveyor in Kafka's novel *The Castle*, who, having been summoned and then denied entrance, spent his life trying to get in, having quite forgotten why he was summoned in the first place. I did not know why I wanted to get across that bridge; but I knew I did. Chou laughed but did nothing during that trip. My next trip took place in February 1973; on my very last night, as I was packing my bags, a woman from protocol knocked at my door and told me that the Premier invited me to a private talk. We were driven to another guest house on the other side of the lake, where Chou En-lai and I talked until three in the morning. As I took my leave he suddenly said in English: "Let's take a walk." While continuing our chat, we crossed two bridges; he then entered his car, which had been following us, and drove off. It was an extraordinary gesture.

Even the Chinese seemed to regard him with special reverence, to see
in him of all their leaders a special human quality. On a visit in late
1975 I asked a young interpreter about Chou's health; tears brimmed in
her eyes as she told me he was gravely ill. It was no accident that he
was so deeply mourned in China after his death, or that the extraordinary
expressions of yearning for greater freedom that appeared in China
in the late 1970s invoked and praised his name.

Chou En-lai, in short, was one of the two or three most impressive
men I have ever met. Urbane, infinitely patient, extraordinarily in-
telligent, subtle, he moved through our discussions with an easy grace
that penetrated to the essence of our new relationship as if there were no
sensible alternative. The challenge of bringing together two societies so
estranged by ideology and history was considerable. Conventional wis-
dom would have counseled the removal of specific causes of tension;
but there was one cause of tension — Taiwan — that permitted no rapid
solution, while the others were too trivial to provide the basis of an
enduring relationship. The answer was to discuss fundamentals: our
perceptions of global and especially Asian affairs, in a manner that
clarified our purposes and perspectives and thereby bridged two decades