POTUS and the VIPs, Part II, compiled by Bill Wanlund
We continue our series with another visit by President Reagan -- this time to Beijing, and then move forward to President Clinton -- not traveling, but playing host to Brazil's new president.
Reagan in China: Say Nothing About the Poultry, by Beatrice Camp
Twelve years after President Nixon’s historic opening to China, President Ronald Reagan visited the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in April 1984. The visit was a vast undertaking with an enormous entourage – Ambassador Arthur Hummel was reportedly stunned to hear that the president’s party would number over 800. For a politician like Reagan who had repeatedly criticized President Jimmy Carter for establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing, it was a huge move. For the Chinese, it was a very welcome symbol of acceptance. First lady Nancy Reagan accompanied her husband; some 600 journalists covered the trip. The Reagans toured historical and cultural sites in Beijing and attended a State Dinner at the Great Hall of the People before traveling on to Xian and Shanghai.
As a first-tour officer in the Press & Culture Section of the embassy, I helped prepare briefing materials for the cultural sites – researching details such as converting Qin dynasty [221-206 BCE] measurements into feet and inches to describe the height of the terra cotta warriors in Xian. In Beijing, one of my responsibilities was making sure that The Wall Street Journal got delivered to the doors at the Diaoyutai State Guest House every morning, a task totally dependent on the unreliable flight from Hong Kong carrying the newspapers. Once Reagan and entourage moved on to Xian, the second leg of the journey, I flew to Shanghai to work in the press center for the third and last stop.As with all presidential visits to the PRC, but especially for the first since the normalization of relations, every detail was a negotiation. One of these involved the “return banquet.” The Chinese system for state visits dictated that the hosts give a welcome banquet at the Great Hall of the People on the first night; the second night the visiting dignitary hosted a return banquet, also at the Great Hall of the People. The Chinese side chose the menu both nights but the foreign visitor paid the bill the second night. As it turned out, the White House, which is to say Nancy Reagan, wanted to feature Western food. With a new hotel, the Great Wall Sheraton, about to open, the White House decided to host the Reagan return banquet there.
Word arrived at the embassy that Nancy Reagan wanted to serve turkey. Having been warned in our Mandarin training at the Foreign Service Institute that Chinese don’t like eating turkey – the meat is unappetizingly dry; having knives at the table is barbaric; and so on – we sensed trouble even before the press got wind of the plans.
In the early 1980s, just over a dozen American journalists were credentialed in Beijing. Frequently frustrated by nearly daily struggles with PRC officials stonewalling their inquiries, this stalwart group of foreign correspondents tended to be cantankerous with all sorts of officialdom, including ours. When they picked up the hot news tip that Nancy Reagan, who already had a reputation for extravagance, was flying in turkeys from California, this small press corps turned on the embassy. We became the stonewallers, under strict orders from the front office: “don’t say anything about the turkeys.”
Prudently, the embassy staged a practice banquet with some Chinese diplomats to test the menu that had been developed by James Rosebush, Nancy Reagan’s chief of staff. Rosebush had chosen to name the first dish “Panda Salad,” and decreed it would be topped by raw bean sprouts to provide an Asian touch to the Western menu. When a senior Chinese protocol diplomat at the practice meal observed in polite, British-accented English that “when we Chinese eat bean sprouts raw, we vomit,” the menu was quickly revised to replace bean sprouts with hearts of palm. The banquet went more or less as planned, served Western style with the turkey and the potatoes and vegetables all on one plate.
The Chinese guests at my table didn’t know what to do with the plated food; used to sharing multiple central dishes, they found the idea of being served this way confusing. They were probably also disappointed at not getting to enjoy a second state banquet at the Great Hall of the People, with sea slugs and all the exotic foods reserved for high-level events. In an era when cabbage and steamed buns was the basic Beijing meal, being deprived of the rare opportunity to feast on Chinese delicacies had to be a blow. They picked at the strange food on their plates. When the Panda Salad course arrived, now featuring soft brown hearts of palm, the ping pong champion seated beside me confessed he’d never eaten panda meat before.
Whatever else the Chinese guests thought of the menu went undiscovered. However, we got a small taste of the reaction a month later when my husband and I stood in for the ambassador at a banquet that the mayor of Beijing was giving for teenage students from Greenwich, Connecticut, on an art exchange program. As we worked our way through the all-duck meal, a very polite 13-year-old asked us to “please tell the mayor it’s not that I don’t like duck tongue, it’s just that I’m not very hungry.” We seized the chance to chat up the Chinese officials about their experience at the Reagan banquet. As they loosened up to our conversation, the mayor allowed as how he had never had food like that before. “You know,” he said, “the problem with Western food is that an hour after you eat it, you’re hungry again.”
This article originally appeared in American Diplomacy, February 2023, which provided the photos.
Bea Camp’s 32-year foreign service career was evenly split between the U.S. Information Agency and the State Department, with assignments in Beijing, Bangkok, Stockholm, Budapest, Chiang Mai, Shanghai, and Washington, DC. With her appointment in Shanghai, Bea became the first woman, and the first public diplomacy officer, to lead a U.S. consulate in China. In addition, she twice managed U.S. participation in major world’s fairs – Shanghai Expo 2010 and Milan Expo 2015 -- and served as Senior Advisor at the Smithsonian. After retiring, Bea has served temporary assignments in Ulaanbaatar, Jakarta, Canberra, Bangkok, Okinawa, the APEC summit in San Francisco, and Ho Chi Minh City. From 20182 to 2023 she was Editor of American Diplomacy, an online journal focused on international relations and foreign service life.[Editor’s note: Are you duck-tongue curious? Check this out. Sorry we missed your Thanksgiving menu planning.]
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Visit of President of Brazil, by Michael Korff
I was the Brazil desk officer for the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) when the newly-elected Brazil President Fernando Henrique Cardoso was invited for a state visit, which took place in April 1995. Those of us in USIA were especially interested in the visit because both President Cardoso and First Lady Dr. Ruth Cardoso were Fulbrighters. When I mentioned this at one of the first meetings at the State Department to plan for the visit, our State Department colleagues were quick to ask if USIA would take over the scheduling of Dr. Cardoso: After all, they were going to be very busy with the details of President Cardoso's visit.
For me, the visit provided an opportunity to meet the leadership of the Fulbright Association (where I would later serve as Senior Fellow) and Mrs. Harriet Mayor Fulbright, the Senator's widow. It also gave me access to the White House for the first time and an opportunity to meet the Press and Cultural Attachés at the Embassy of Brazil as we planned for the visit. I also got to scout Blair House as the venue for the Fulbright reception honoring Dr. Cardoso, which President Cardoso also attended.
My meetings in preparation for the visit must have been mentioned in a report to USIA Director Joseph Duffey. Before I knew it, I received a call from the Director's office asking me to try to get the Director an invitation to the State Dinner for the Cardosos: It turned out that the Clinton Administration had never included the Director in a State Dinner. Clearly, I did not have much clout, but I did make the request, which came quite late in the planning.
Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful. I do hope that the Director ultimately got to attend a State Dinner.
As for me, I got to attend the White House press briefing where plans for the visit were reviewed and the Rose Garden welcoming ceremony the next day. (It turns out, the Rose Garden audience involved elements of the "rent-a-crowd" strategy that we sometimes employed overseas at some events where we needed warm bodies to occupy seats.)
Unfortunately, the Rose Garden ceremony took place the day after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The tragedy led to the cancelation of some events; the flags at half-staff diminished the ceremony’s pageantry and served to remind onlookers that the shadow cast by the bombing in Oklahoma City covered the entire nation. [The Rose Garden ceremony may be viewed here.]
A PostScript: Speaking of Travel
Pan Am is synonymous with glamorous travel. Although the airline stopped flying in 1991, the name still emanates nostalgia and symbolizes an era before the words "overtourism" or "selfie stick" existed.Now, there's a chance to fly Pan Am again, provided you have deep pockets. Pan Am Brands, which owns the former airline's licensing rights, will fly a special Pan Am-branded private jet on a 12-day trip from New York City in June 2025.
The “Tracing the Transatlantic” itinerary has stops in Bermuda, Lisbon, Marseille, London, and Foynes, Ireland, all places that have significance to Pan Am and were on the airline’s old routes. The price tag? A cool $59,950 a person. Or you can read on for this recollection of two round-the-world trlps on PanAm, by our Editor Michael Korff.
For most of my early career, we flew exclusively on Pan Am. The airline had two round-the-world flights: one flew eastbound and one flew westbound. We were able to use our full-economy fare home leave tickets for round-the-world tickets in both 1985 and 1987. In 1985, we traveled Frankfurt-Washington- Bermuda-JFK-Pittsburgh -Nashville-Orlando- Sacramento-Tokyo-Bangkok-Bombay-Frankfurt. We even got to take separate trips to Budapest and Istanbul. I organized the trips without the aid of the Internet.
The 1987 round-the-world trip was equally daunting and included stops in Honolulu and Hong Kong before we returned to Bern, where we were living at the time. I don't remember PanAm being particularly "glamorous," but it did seem to keep to schedule better than today's airlines. I do remember that there was a smoking section, the smoke from which inevitably infected the entire plane. The airline's demise came halfway through my career.