One American life, set on new course by Nixon’s China visit

BEIJING (AP) — Each afternoon, just after the midday rest break, we’d gather in the music room of Fangcaodi Elementary School. The teacher would hand out a song sheet, mimeographed on pulp paper. We’d stand, ramrod straight, and sing Chinese songs with stirring tunes and — no other way to put it — lyrics of Communist propaganda.

“We are all crack shots. Every bullet annihilates one enemy."

“We are thankful to dear Chairman Mao for building our beautiful school.”

“Worker, farmer, soldier — unite and rise up!”

It was the fall of 1979, and I was 11. Three months earlier, I had been sitting in Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, watching the Pirates start a run that would end in a World Series win I would miss. I was a suburban kid who just wanted to hang out with my friends.

Suddenly I found myself in the belly of what was still, back home, being called “Red China." Though I didn't realize the momentousness of it at first, we were one of the earliest American families to move to China in the months after it and the United States normalized relations.

For this, I had Richard Nixon to thank.

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Nixon visited Mao Zedong in Beijing 50 years ago this week, when they both led their respective nations. Nixon called it “the week that changed the world.” Seven years later, on Jan. 1, 1979, that meeting echoed into irrevocable history when their successors, President Jimmy Carter and then-Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, officially established diplomatic relations.

Deng was not China's “paramount leader” yet. But his new project — launching something called “reform and opening-up” that would help infuse capitalism into the communist system — was part of why I ended up in China at age 11.

When China opened to Americans, young people...