China Loses a "Good Friend"

George and Barbara Bush at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in 1974

For China, the death of George HW Bush today is a sad one, as it lost what it considers as "a good friend". He had a long relationship with China that dates back over 40 years.

Bush Senior was one of the first prominent Americans to go to China in the early 1970s and was tasked with building diplomatic relations with China after President Richard Nixon's historic visit in 1972.

Two years later Bush headed the US liaison office, and for about a year he established relationships with senior Chinese leaders and diplomats, including Deng Xiaoping.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger would criticize Bush for being too soft on power diplomacy, but the latter's cultivation of relationships behind the scenes proved valuable later on -- Bush obviously understood the Chinese play the long game, and he followed that strategy.

Bush's 1989 visit to China with a young Yang Jiechi translating

When Bush became Vice President in 1980, President Ronald Regan dispatched him to Beijing to deal with the issue of Taiwan. And then when he was elected president in 1989, Bush made an official trip to China a month after being inaugurated.

However, later that year the Tiananmen Square massacre erupted and the following day Bush condemned the killing of innocent people and suspended military sales as well as exchanges with high level Chinese officials.

But in the background, Bush sent national security adviser Brent Scowcroft twice to Beijing, as well as deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger. When senators found out, they felt Bush was being two-faced.

"At that time, the President was saying there could  not be business as usual with a Government that took such actions," said senator George Mitchell, Democrat of Maine. "Yet this is increasingly what seems to be happening."

He said the trips "make a mockery of our profession of concern for human rights and the stated ideals of our democratic system of government."

The Bush family with Yang Jiechi at the 2008 Beijing Games

Bush's relationship with one of Xi Jinping's top advisers, Yang Jiechi, also goes back to 1977 when he acted as a junior interpreter to the American official on his trip to Tibet.

Fast-forward to 2008 when Bush's son became President, then Chinese President Hu Jintao rolled out the red carpet for the entire Bush family to visit during the Beijing Olympics, and even dine in Zhongnanhai.

That was probably the warmest point in China-US relations, and now we're in the midst of a trade war (over 130 days) between Xi and President Donald Trump.

Unfortunately not everything changes for the better...

Review: Better Angels

The home in Muscatine, Iowa that Xi Jinping stayed in back in 1985

This evening I got to watch a preview of a documentary called Better Angels by two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Malcolm Clarke.

It's a strange title for a film about the relationship between the United States and China, but it's taken from a quote that Henry Kissinger says at the beginning, how better angels will make our future better.

So aside from the big names like Kissinger, former secretaries of state James Baker and Madeleine Albright, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and even former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, the documentary follows different, ordinary people on how the other country has affected them.

A picture of Xi (far right) in front of that Muscatine home

One is a teacher from Texas who goes to China to teach English and American football and is grateful for the opportunity to not only make money to support his family, but also learn more about the culture; another is a blind man who travels around the world and when he's in the US he wants to go to Muscatine, Iowa to visit the house that Chinese President Xi Jinping stayed in in 1985. It turns out another Chinese man bought the home and turns it into a "Friendship House".

There are sympathetic portraits of Chinese who oversee factories in the US and Ethiopia, and how they hardly get to visit their families, and how some Americans employed in these Chinese factories are so thrilled to have a job following the financial crisis in 2009.

One neat scene is watching a Chinese man showing American kids how to use an abacus and how it stimulates their interest in math. After a few lessons they turn into human calculators.

A teacher appreciates his life in China with his Chinese wife

The stories don't necessarily weave together nicely, but they each show a nuanced side of the Chinese or Americans. However, there are some heavy weights like Wanda's Wang Jianlin, who's filmed singing and the audience in the ballroom is cheering him on... this was obviously before the company got into trouble with the central government...

Clarke was at our screening and afterwards he explained the film took over three years to make and they had to re-edit the film following Donald Trump's election win. The British director also said he got all the big name people he wanted mostly because he would drop names of other people in there and so they didn't want to miss out in being in the documentary.

He's currently showing it to small audiences here and there, and there are plans to show Better Angels at the Asia Society in Hong Kong (maybe because chairman Ronnie Chan gets his say in the film?).

British director Malcolm Clarke

Clarke's strategy is to have a wider release in the US before showing it in China, where he had to get layers of approval; but because the film is practically positive about China -- and Xi -- that it got the green light. And Clarke is keen on making more films about the country because he finds it so fascinating -- good and bad.

Better Angels isn't for everyone, but for those interested in learning a bit more about China, this gives a more intimate view of how it impacts people at a grassroots level.

Quanjude Celebrates 150 Years

Roasting the ducks over wood from fruit trees gives the birds a sweet taste

A Beijing institution, Quanjude Peking Duck celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.

It used to be the place for the roast bird called kaoya (烤鸭), as the restaurant is covered with pictures of VIPs who have eaten there, but most prominent are the photographs of then US President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tucking into Peking Duck in 1972.

The original Quanjude location in Qianmen West

When I first visited China in 1985, we went to that restaurant and I couldn't understand why these famous people would like eating Quanjude's roast duck because it was so oily! And all they had on the menu was every other duck part, such as heart, liver, intestines, web, minced duck wrapped in cabbage, duck soup... was that all the restaurant served?

Then when I came back in 2007, I was so relieved to learn there was an alternative place -- Da Dong Roast Duck, and it is one of my favourite places, not only because the ducks are roasted a bit longer to let the grease drip off and make the skin crispier, but also because the restaurant features a number of other non-duck dishes that are just as delicious.

Perhaps that's why Quanjude is so anxious to trumpet its big anniversary this year, and marking the occasion with the opening of a museum in its Beijing restaurant.

The museum features 20 models that show each stage in preparing the famous dish. One of the stages shows the bird being pumped full of air to separate the skin from the fat.

A perfectly roasted duck before its carved...

How many people will check out the museum is hard to say, especially with hungry stomachs... nevertheless Quanjude boasts it has served 196 million ducks worldwide -- including a new branch in Melbourne!

That's a lot of ducks in 150 years...

Beijing Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant

14 Qianmen Xidajie
Beijing
(86 10) 6511 2418

quanjude.com.cn (in Chinese)