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Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.

Today we're going back 50 years to the historic meeting between President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao.

It normalised relations between the US and China for the first time in a quarter of a century.

This report from 2009 is by Lucy Williamson.

It's 1972. China, still under the tightly controlled communist rule of Chairman Mao is closed to the Western world.

But on this grey winter day, party officials have gathered at the Capitol's airport, their

dark overcoats buttoned against the cold.

A very unusual visitor is about to arrive.

There was great excitement as Air Force One with President Nixon and the rest of us on it

landed at the Beijing Airport.

Winston Lord was on the plane as special assistant to US National Security

advisor Henry Kissinger. This was a dramatic geopolitical event of course and

therefore I think we sort of expected a very colorful

airport ceremony. It might have been a little naive. The fact is it was very spare

it was a gray day anyway. There was a small band and honor guard and some people. But beyond that, it was very restrained, not unfriendly, but just no color, no jubilation, no sense of history, which

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