i saw julie eisenhower on a cctv program two weeks ago, a program gathering all those people involved in one way or another in nixon's china visit in 1972 - diplomats, business community members, students, ballet dancers, cameramen. zhang hanzhi, the chinese interpreter for president nixon then, now in her late 50s, was on the program too. she told stories of all kinds of absurdities, mutual prejudices and suspicions, and mistakes too, and gaffs. "everything went very smoothly," she explains, "except this once." in interpreting the american president's speech - which referred to the distance between the two countries, zhang hanzhi translated miles as kilometres. no one knew she had made a mistake - no one indeed knew exactly how far it was from beijing to d.c. - it was only later that the premier, doing some mental arithmatic, said to her - "hao xiang jin le yi dian" (wait, does that distance seems a little too short to you?) i wonder if people still remember zhang hanzhi in america. i'll ask nohrnberg when i get back - he'll have been old enough to remember her, if he does. when the chinese table tennis team visited america, she went along as an interpreter, but everyone was so afraid they would be detained in america, that they swore, before they left, as the poem goes - should my loyal heart remain, what matters that my bones do not return to my homeland? (rather like the sentiment in rupert brooke's the soldier - in some corner of a foreign field that is forever england) when they reached the us - they were told that reporters should attend a briefing before the press conference. she, and the other interpreters present, were at a loss - they had no idea how to translate the word briefing, since there just wasn't such a word or concept in chinese, and finally settling for "chui1 feng1 hui4." those of you who understand chinese will already be sniggering. chui1 feng1; lit. blowing air. (briefing/breathing) and of course you also know what else chui feng means. at the appointed time of the briefing, the hairdressers' salon was filled with reporters who were there to have their hair washed and blown. but the mistakes weren't all on the chinese side too. all the chinese representatives wore identical winter coats. those were made at a special shop in beijing, where you had to provide letters as proof that you were on a diplomatic mission abroad, in order to have an outfit made, and all of these coats were cut to the exact same pattern, for men and for women. at the end of a press conference, a female reporter came up to her: can i ask you a private question? suspicious, she agreed. "wo ke yi mo yi mo ni de yi fu ma?" (can i feel your clothing?) haha. and, of course, even though the coats are exactly the same, a ny times reporter believed he had figured out a "code" represented by the colour of the overcoats - such a colour was for diplomats, and another colour was for the small fries - based on his idea of rank as indicated by coat colour, a picture, captioned: "ambassador of china" printed in the ny times, showed the figure of the ambassador's chauffeur.