saul yeung, who has forged a new life for himself and his family in the us.es, communist china's relationship with the us was difficult, to put it mildly. but things started to change in 1972 with president richard nixon's visit to meet chairman mao. the former diplomat winston lord was part of the delegation that travelled to china. file: today, president nixon is visiting china — the first american statesman to have set foot on chinese soil since chairman mao came to power in 1949. frankly, many of us were a little disappointed in the arrival arrangements. this was a huge geopolitical event, and we naively thought there'd be big crowds. in fact, there were just a few people. but then we recognised, again, that this was in keeping with the realistic fact that we had been enemies for 22 years and you couldn't turn the page immediately. and so, these two great countries, the most powerful nation on earth visits the most populous nation on earth. i was special assistant to henry kissinger, the national security adviser, and i was in charge of orchestrating and