Landing in a Peking Pea-Souper in February 1976

Seeing images from Beijing this week of the disgusting air quality did make me think that, pollution aside, Peking was always a fairly foggy city. It certainly was in 1976 when Dick Nixon, by then a former president, flew in to a “pea-souper” (other papers described it as a “cold mist”) at Peking Airport for the fourth anniversary of his historic 1972 rapprochement visit. They arrived late at night so I’m not sure a picture survives of the actual fog.

Qiao Guanhua meets Dick and Pat at Peking Airport. Qiao was Foreign Minister but associated with the Gang of Four. When Mao died a few months later in September he was sacked, sidelined and never regained any significant political authority. The woman with Qiao is presumably Zhang Hanzhi, his second wife and an English interpreter for Mao himself at times. She had been Nixon’s translator in ’72. Her divorce from her first husband had been a “Red Scandal” in 1973 and Qiao was 22 years her senior.