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Archive for George H. W. Bush

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Visiting A Future American President

by Beverley
July 10th, 2013

Chapter Seven
VISITING A FUTURE AMERICAN PRESIDENT

George Bush and Steve Allen in Tientsin

George Bush and Steve Allen in Tientsin

That invitation George H. W. Bush had extended on our hurried encounter outside the Tientsin carpet factory was repeated in Peking. Needless to say, we accepted. The man we now refer to as father of the first President George W. Bush was at the time Ambassador George H. W. Bush. He had been the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, before being appointed Chief of Mission from the United States to China. We didn’t have full diplomatic ties to China in 1975, so we didn’t have an Ambassador there. And we didn’t have an embassy.

Where we were invited was to the United States Legation. It was a nondescript concrete brick building exactly like all those around it, except in size. The Czechoslovakian Embassy just down the street was tremendous and had a swimming pool, tennis court and large staff. The Greek Embassy right next door was much larger than the U.S. Legation. And the Russian Embassy, with reportedly more than 400 people living inside, was gigantic. The U.S. legation had a total of 28 people connected with it. Bush wanted to keep it small. And unlike the Russians, he had all Chinese staff. They did however have one debugged room in the legation for confidential talk.

Barbara Bush was grounded with a flu bug the evening we went to visit, as were Rosa and Jayne who remained in their rooms back at the hotel. But George Bush was the perfect host. Before any sightseeing, he steered the American guests straight to the bar where they were met by an unfamiliar sight — no orange pop, no Mao tai — there was scotch, bourbon, gin. My request was not for any of these, but for an English language newspaper. “Sadly I can’t supply that Beverley,” he replied. I have to go out to Hong Kong to get one myself. Not allowed in China. No western magazines either.”

Our future president couldn’t have been more personable. He was warm and friendly and obviously delighted to have guests from home, particularly Steve Allen.

The living room of the residence section of the Legation had magnificent walls covered with many coats of deep yellow lacquer. Our host gave full credit to former resident Mrs. David Bruce for this. Evangeline Bruce was a woman of superb taste and she had achieved wonders inside this unimaginative concrete brick structure. Chinese earthenware pots with bamboo trellises four feet high displayed espaliered nasturtiums in bright orange and yellow bloom in various areas of the room. These were most effective against the spectacular yellow lacquer walls. The room was divided into comfortable seating groups, with the sofas covered in yellow, orange or brown raw silk. You can be sure there were no white lace antimacassars here.

Paintings hadn’t been sent out from Washington yet to adorn the walls. But Barbara Bush did some interesting improvising in the large dining room. She displayed a very large finely executed needlework piece she had done herself. “Barbara had a lot of time to work on it sitting there during the long sessions when I was at the U.N.,” her husband explained laughingly. I photographed our host in front of the framed needlework and many years later, when Barbara Bush appeared at a political fundraiser in Santa Barbara in role of First Lady of the United States, I presented her with a copy of that picture. She was so pleased she said because she had no other photograph of that project that involved so much work and she’d left the framed needlepoint behind in Peking.

My great interest in the house, having heard about it in detail shortly before leaving Santa Barbara from Evangeline Bruce’s best friend Baroness Pauline de Rothschild, earned me a private invitation for a tour led by our host. Everyone else was quite content to relax in American surroundings, with no one listening behind every chair. The upstairs sitting room was done in shades of beige and rust, and there were pictures everywhere of the large Bush family. Four of the five Bush children were expected for a visit to their parents in China a short time after we left. Ambassador Bush’s mother had just been visiting from her home in Connecticut. She had been a great hit with the Chinese as she bicycled all over Peking.

The private quarters were spacious and contemporary. The bathrooms were modern, though not fancy. The guest rooms were comfortable and cheery. The contemporary Chinese earthenware the Bushes had collected since arriving in China was pointed out with pride. In the living room we were shown a Boehm porcelain panda bear similar to the ones we had seen pictured when President Nixon had given them as gifts to his hosts that first trip to China. The kitchen was a large white tiled room, centered by a gigantic stove and grill. George Bush spoke glowingly of their Chinese cooks.

He reported both Barbara and he loved the food, and they were generally quite delighted to be in Peking. They played tennis, and thanks to daily Chinese lessons he could now keep score in Chinese when playing with Chinese friends. Sundays they attended church services held at 9:30 in an old bible school building. “I wouldn’t miss church,” he explained. “It means a lot more here. The service is in Chinese. The Africans all sing the hymns in African and we sing them in English. It’s a very personal part of our lives. We’re very glad that we are permitted to have it,” he added. Hearing this we were all brought back to the realities of the world outside, the world where we were in the middle of the frightening Cultural Revolution in China.

It was a nice visit, and well worth the time I had taken earlier in the day to visit the beauty salon in our hotel. It was probably the only one in all of China at the time. Vanity was definitely not encouraged under the communist rule, and was even less encouraged during the Cultural Revolution. Even wearing lipstick was considered a serious offense for a Chinese woman during the Cultural Revolution. Actually it was just nice to have really clean hair again. Torrie had been very optimistic with that hair dryer, and very athletic to get hair washed in the Chinese hotel sinks. I opted for the beauty salon.

The Peking Hotel Beauty Salon looked like an American hospital operating room. The floors and walls were white tile. The cute young girl with her hair in two braids who did my hair wore a white surgical smock. She soaped my hair for about five minutes with me in a sitting position, periodically carrying off excess soap to a sink across the room. For the rinsing process one transferred to an oral surgeons chair near where the excess soap had been deposited. A very clean smelling lotion of some sort was applied. My operator had fairly modern rollers and there was quite a good modern standing hair dryer to facilitate her work. She asked me if I’d like my hair teased. This was the most contemporary encounter I had with any Mainland Chinese the entire trip. Back in my room, examining the finished product in my bathroom mirror, I had to admit she did quite a decent job.

China excerpt from David Frost’s interview with George H. W. Bush in the A&E documentary “One on One with David Frost – George Bush: A President’s Story”.

Chapter 1: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 2: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
Chapter 3: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4
Chapter 4: Part 1
Chapter 5: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
Chapter 6: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
Chapter 7: Part 1
Chapter 8: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 9: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 10: Part 1
Chapter 11: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 12: Part 1
Chapter 13: Part 1

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories My Life

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: And So the Adventure Begins

by Beverley
October 2nd, 2012

Since Fluffy took off to save his turkey friends from Thanksgiving disaster there haven’t been any health reports and queries come in from all over the world. Thank all of you for caring. I’m proud to report I’m making great progress. Tracey was here again and got me to dine at Lucky’s, Via Vai & even lunch at the Pharmacy. She found a stairless path from the parking lot in.

Yesterday Holly Lord and I lunched at Tydes and last night Bill Cornfield took me to Plow & Angel for dinner beneath the magnolia trees filled with sparking lights. And we even had a full moon!

And now I’m getting back to work. I haven’t felt up the hassle of getting my book “A Front Seat at the Cultural Revolution” published. This story of Jayne Meadows, Steve Allen and I getting into China in 1975 is fascinating and has an ending that is astounding! And great photos of a China were not a single person in the entire country owned a car. Where everyone wore the same shabby Mao suits. Today the roads are filled with Ferraris and Bentleys. Fifteen thousand dollar Birkin handbags can’t be found in New York now. They are all going to China!

Tracey suggested I serialize the book on my blog so here goes. Come with me to a China totally unrelated to China today. Take a front seat at the Cultural Revolution with Jayne, Steve and me……….

Beverly Hills April 2005: Monday’s society columns reported that Merv Griffin’s Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel ballroom was filled to overflowing, the gala benefit chairman wore a floral print chiffon gown from Oscar de la Renta’s spring collection and $250,000 was raised for the charity.

“You live in Santa Barbara I understand,” the elegant older woman, an American of Chinese descent, sitting to my right said in opening conversation. And my affirmative answer was followed with, “Do you know Rosa Wu* by any chance?”

“Indeed I do. It was thanks to Rosa that I was able to visit China during the Cultural Revolution 34 years ago. Just last week I told a friend about a remark I made to my fellow traveler Steve Allen(1) in 1975, that Rosa’s mother must have been the Madame Claude(2) of China to get us into China during the Cultural Revolution, and to get us a one month visa at that…


* Name has been changed
1. Steve Allen was actor, composer, author, comedian and possibly best known for starting the Tonight Show in 1954 on NBC.
2. Madame Claude ran the most famous, most glamorous house of prostitution in Paris the second half of the 20th century. Many of her beautiful, elegant, well trained girls married into the French aristocracy.


Chapter One
AND SO THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
Part One

They were an incongruous pair, the flame-tressed American woman and the stylish American of Chinese descent belting out chorus after chorus of Hello Dolly in Mandarin Chinese. Big red-painted wheels rolling noisily over rusted train tracks played backup for the twosome as we made our way towards the crossing point into the People’s Republic of China.

White mist from the steam engine up ahead cast a protective shield over a cluster of baby water buffalo grazing beyond our train windows. Big-footed Hakka women, who unlike most Han Chinese women never bound their feet, labored in the fields, shielded from the 20th century by black ruffled curtains cascading from their crownless straw sun shade hats. Viewing the serene ancient pastoral scene outside our train windows one could lose prospective of the ideological fanaticism of the Cultural Revolution that gnawed away at the remarkable ancient Chinese civilization.

And we were singing our way right into the eye of that frightening storm.

It was February 24, 1975 and ten of us from southern California were going into China. During that dark period of Chinese history people didn’t go to China, or leave China, visit China, take a trip to China. One was either going into China or coming out of China. It was rather like gaining admission to a high security prison.

The trip had come upon us quite unexpectedly. Rosa Wu had gone from Santa Barbara to visit her mother in Peking, a rather surprising event in 1974 when American citizens were not welcome in China unless their name was Nixon or Kissinger. While there she learned from her beautiful mother that the Chinese government was hoping to somehow get 10 Americans for the upcoming First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair to be held in February 1975. The had ten Rumanians and ten Czechoslovakians, ten Russians and ten Bulgarians. But suddenly they wanted ten Americans.

Jumping into action Rosa flew out of China to Hong Kong and from there contacted her friend actress Jayne Meadows Allen in Los Angeles and on the telephone she, Jayne’s’ husband Steve Allen and Jayne formed a carpet company. That was three out of required ten Americans. Then Rosa remembered that she had seen me taking notes for my society column in the Santa Barbara News-Press in shorthand and remembered me once saying I longed to some day walk on the Great Wall of China. “Call Beverley Jackson in Santa Barbara and ask her if she wants to come as the secretary of our carpet company.” Without a thought of how I would swing it of course I said yes!

That was four out of ten. Rosa and Jayne filled out the remaining six with a couple who owned a carpet company, one of Hollywood’s leading interior designers and her daughter, a woman who had an important antique carpet company and a male interior designer. I was the least interested in carpets but I worked the hardest once we got to the Tientsin Carpet Fair as I had to keep writing the whole time — notes on all the endless meetings and transactions. I earned my trip by filling notebook after notebook of shorthand notes that were really of no interest to us but impressed the Chinese with how dedicated I was to my job. Jayne and Rosa bought lots of carpets for their company. Steve spent his time talking into his two small handheld recorders taking notes for the book he would write Explaining China.

Getting visas wasn’t easy. The United States and China had no formal diplomatic relations. George H. W. Bush was our representative in China but he was not an Ambassador. He was Chief of American Legation in Peking. There was no proper embassy in Washington DC and our visas had to come from a small office somewhere in our capital. Mine arrived special delivery air mail in the evening the night before I was to leave. Being optimistic I was packed and ready to go. I knew that I was going to China even though I had no visa for entry in my hand until hours before my departure from Santa Barbara.

This is what led up to our going into China on that old steam powered train with Hollywood actress and TV comedienne Jayne Meadows and Rosa Wu singing their way into China. Other than our own group, the passengers in our railroad car were returning Chinese carrying big bundles back from a day’s journey to the New Territories or Hong Kong who chose to ignore the strange singing and foreign words.

There was a bit of déjà vu for the two singers in the words “It’s nice to have you back where you belong”. Rosa had lived her early childhood in China, as did Jayne whose parents were American missionaries there. Jayne remembered her family’s hasty departure from China when conditions turned very bad for foreigners. She was seven years old and her sister, the late actress Audrey Meadows was five.

Hello Dolly in Mandarin wasn’t usual, nor was anything else about our journey into China in February 1975. Americans weren’t exactly running in and out of China in over-packed tour buses at that time. President Richard Nixon had been there. And Henry Kissinger. David and Evangeline Bruce had opened the U.S. Legation, but they weren’t swamped by an overflow of visitors from home. Barbara and George H. W. Bush were now holding down the Legation fort with no improvement in the situation. —to be continued

Chapter 1: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 2: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
Chapter 3: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4
Chapter 4: Part 1
Chapter 5: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
Chapter 6: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
Chapter 7: Part 1
Chapter 8: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 9: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 10: Part 1
Chapter 11: Part 1  Part 2
Chapter 12: Part 1
Chapter 13: Part 1

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Books

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