I cried. Cried because of comrade Deng

"So it was that every minister, cadre, public servant, diplomat and China-Watcher scoured every edition of People's Daily for some sign, some indicator of who was in, who was out and sometimes who had been out but was now being rehabilitated.

Once, in a rare private moment with the suave, white-haired President of People's Daily, Shao Huaze -a former army general whose interests in chinese poetry and practice of calligraphy belied his hard-line ideological bent- I inquired about the most memorable moment in his long career.

'Without doubt', he said, 'it was the morning of March 1973, when I picked up a copy of the People's Daily and there was a photograph of the leadership following a banquet given in honour of Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Kampuchea at the Sichuan Restaurant [now the Elite China Club] in Xi Rong Xian Lane, near the Forbidden City.

In the corner of the photograph was the unmistakable figure of comrade Deng [Xiaoping]. It was the first indication that he was back, having been stripped of all his posts during the Cultural Revolution and banished to a tractor factory in the far west.

I cried. cried. Because I knew that know comrade Deng was back, the suffering would end, the madness would stop and things would change for the better."

Bruce Dover, Rupert Murdoch's China Adventures.